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Title: Men and Things
Author: Atkinson, Henry A.
Language: English
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[Illustration:
Press Illustrating Service.
CUTTING STEEL FOR SHIPS WITH GIGANTIC SHEARS.
These workers are the servants of civilization and without them we
would have no such trade as we have to-day.]
MEN AND THINGS
BY
HENRY A. ATKINSON
SECRETARY, SOCIAL SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES
AND ASSOCIATE SECRETARY OF THE COMMISSION ON THE CHURCHES
AND SOCIAL SERVICE OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF THE
CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA
NEW YORK
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE
UNITED STATES AND CANADA
CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING MISSION STUDY
Send the proper one of the following blanks to the secretary of your
denominational mission board whose address is in the “List of Mission
Boards and Correspondents” at the end of this book.
=================================================================
We expect to form a mission study class, and desire to have any
suggestions that you can send that will help in organizing and
conducting it.
Name ............................................................
Street and Number ...............................................
City or Town ..................... State ........................
Denomination ..................... Church .......................
Text-book to be used ............................................
=================================================================
We have organized a mission study class and secured our books.
Below is the enrolment.
Name of City or Town .................... State .................
Text-book ......................... Underline auspices under
which class is held:
Denomination ......................
Church Y. P. Soc.
Church ............................ Men Senior
Women’s Soc. Intermediate
Name of Leader .................... Y. W. Soc. Junior
Sunday School
Address ...........................
Name of Pastor .................... Date of starting ............
State whether Mission Study Class, Frequency of Meetings .......
Lecture Course, Program Meetings,
or Reading Circle ............... Number of Members ...........
................................. Does Leader desire Helps? ...
Chairman, Missionary Committee, Young People’s Society ...........
............................................................
Address ....................................................
Chairman, Missionary Committee, Sunday School ....................
............................................................
Address ....................................................
TO MY FATHER
THE REV. THOMAS A. ATKINSON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Foreword xiii
I The World of Work 1
II The World of the Rural Workers 17
III The World of the Spinners and Weavers 33
IV The World of the Garment Workers 49
V The World of the Miners 65
VI The World of the Steel Workers 79
VII The World of the Transportation Men 95
VIII The World of the Makers of Luxuries 113
IX The World of Seasonal Labor and the Casual Workers 135
X The World of Industrial Women 155
XI The World of the Child Workers 173
XII The Message and Ministry of the Church 191
Bibliography 211
Index 215
ILLUSTRATIONS
These workers are the servants of civilization _Frontispiece_
PAGE
The work which men do inevitably groups them together 10
Not many of us stop to consider the man who made possible the
white bread that we eat 18
The worker in these mills is a worker and little or nothing else 42
The workers on the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue 50
We forget the men who are toiling underground 66
The New U. S. Bureau of Mines Rescue Car 74
Commerce and transportation are dependent upon the steel workers 82
The church must preach from the text “A man is more precious
than a bar of steel” 90
Living upon the canal-boats and barges are the families of the
workers 106
The cigarmakers carry no moral enthusiasm into their trade 122
The casual workers are the true servants of humanity 146
In the army of laborers the girl and the woman are drafted 162
Thousands of children in America are doing work which they
ought not to do 186
A Russian Forum in session in the Church of All Nations, Boston 194
The Church of All Nations provided a sleeping place for the
unemployed 202
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”
FOREWORD
A friend said to me this last week, “There are two things that I
instinctively distrust, one is prophecy, the other is statistics. Now
that the war has lengthened into the fourth year and America has taken
her place by the side of the Allies, I find my gorge rising every time
any one attempts a prophecy and quotes statistics. All prophecies have
proved false and statistics are utterly unreliable. Even the clocks
have been made to lie by official decree.”
Granted that my friend is pessimistic, at the same time we must
all sympathize with him in this feeling. In writing this book, I
have tried to keep out of the realm of prophecy and have used just
as few statistics as possible. Most of the facts were secured by
investigations made prior to August, 1914. I have endeavored to check
up every statement with all the reports I could secure from the
Department of Labor at Washington, through the _Survey_ and the _New
Republic_, and through other sources. I feel reasonably certain that
all the statements concerning conditions will bear investigation and
are substantially correct. If there are discrepancies, it will be found
after making due allowance for the judgment of others, that they are
due to changes brought about by unusual conditions in industry. The
principles are unchanged and it is upon these that I have attempted
to place the most emphasis. Concrete facts are but illustrative of
the principle involved. Conditions affect cases but leave principles
undisturbed.
I am greatly indebted to the help in research given me by Miss Lucy
Gardner, of Salem, Massachusetts. As far as possible I have given
credit to the proper authorities for material used. If I have failed to
do so I take this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to all
unknown authors and authorities who have contributed in any way.
This book goes forth to the young people of America in the hope
that they will find in it some small inspiration that will prove
an incentive to them to give themselves to the cause of humanity,
realizing that through service, and through service alone, can any one
make the fullest contribution to his generation.
“Men and Things,”--a nation is great only in its citizens. The great
task before the church to-day is to help to readjust the conditions
existing in all industries so that men and women may labor and enjoy
the fruits of their labor and profit physically and spiritually in the
wealth which they help to create.
HENRY A. ATKINSON.
New York, May, 1918.
CHAPTER I
THE WORLD OF WORK
One of the commonest sights in the city is that of the people going to
work in the early morning; the streets are thronged with men carrying
dinner pails, and girls and women carrying bundles. Many are hurrying
with a worried look on their faces as if fearful of being a minute or
two late. At night the same people are again on the streets with their
faces turned in the opposite direction going home after the day’s work.
A few hours’ rest, then a new day, and the same people may be seen in
the same streets, hurrying to the ever unending tasks.
The country holds the same urge of work. Nothing is more interesting
than a trip through the country early in the morning. With the first
hint of dawn you see a thin pencil of smoke begin to stream from the
chimneys of the farmhouses. Bobbing lanterns appear by the barn. You
hear the clanking of chains and the rattle of harness as the teams are
being made ready for the day’s toil. As the morning grows older, you
meet the workers out on the road with their faces set sturdily toward
the field of their labor.
All night long from a thousand centers massive trains are rushing
toward other centers. In each engine two men, with nerves alert and
eyes peering out into the darkness ahead, guide the power that pulls
the train. Every few minutes the door of the firebox is opened and a
gleam of light makes an arc through the darkness of the night as the
fireman mends his fire.
During the daytime thousands of trackmen have inspected the rails;
other thousands have been at work repairing the ties, putting in new
rails, and improving the grade. Telegraphers are continuously flashing
their messages along the wires; their invisible hands guide these
flying trains. In factories, workshops, mills, mines, forests, on
steamships, on the wharves, wherever there are human beings, there is
work being done. Work is as ceaseless and persistent as life itself.
=The Song of the World of Work.= You remember, perhaps, the first time
that you visited a big city. From your room in the hotel you could hear
the roar of the streets. That roar is made up of hundreds of separate
sounds. It is the voice of work from the throat of the city. It changes
with each hour of the night. Just before dawn there is a lull and the
voice is almost quiet but only for a short period; then it takes on a
new volume of sound and grows in intensity to the full force of its
noonday chorus. What is this voice saying? It is telling the story, and
pouring out the complaint, and singing the song of the world of work.
The idler or the parasite is the exception. People can live without
working, but such is human nature that the person is rarely found who
is willing to bear the odium of being a member of the class that never
toils.
=Work and Life.= “What are you going to do when you grow up?” This
is a common question asked of every girl and boy. Very early in our
lives we begin to try to answer this question. Our environment shapes
our attitude toward life, and helps us to choose the type of work to
which we think we are adapted, but, having once settled the question
of the kind of work we are to do, that choice eventually determines,
in a large measure, our character. Work is so much a part of our lives
that it marks us and puts us in groups. All ministers are very much
alike, doctors are alike, lawyers are alike, business men are alike,
business women resemble each other, so do miners and woodsmen. In fact,
the work that we do groups us automatically with the others in the
same profession or trade. Work creates our world for us and also gives
us our vocabulary. A man who made his fortune on a big cattle-ranch
in the West moved with his family to Chicago. His wife and daughter
succeeded in getting into fashionable society and with the money at
their command made quite a stir in the social world. Foolishly they
were ashamed of their old life on the ranch. They had difficulty in
living down their past, and the husband never reached a place where his
family could be sure of him. He carried his old world with him into the
new environment. One of the standing jokes among their friends was the
way in which this man told his cronies at the club how his wife had
“roped a likely critter and had him down to the house for inspection.”
This was his description of a young man who was considered eligible
for his daughter’s hand. The men who have been brought up in mining
communities use the phraseology of the mines. One of the most prominent
preachers in America was a miner until he was past twenty years of age.
His sermons, lectures, and books are filled with the phrases learned in
his early life. A preacher in a fishing village in the northern part
of Scotland, in making his report to the Annual Conference, stated:
“The Lord has blessed us wonderfully this year. In the spring, with the
flood-tide of his grace, there was brought a multitude of souls into
our harbor. We set our nets and many were taken. These we have salted
down for the kingdom of God.” Needless to say, he and his people were
dependent upon the fishing industry for a living.
=Purpose of Work.= Life is divided into work and play. Work is the
exertion of energy for a given purpose. People accept the claim of
life as they find it with little or no protest because one must work
in order to eat. The compulsion of necessity determines the amount of
work and the amount of play in the average life. Even a casual study of
the industrial life of to-day convinces one that work absorbs a large
part of the time and conscious energy of all the people. The letters
T. B. M. meaning “Tired Business Man” are now used to typify a fact of
modern life. Business takes so much time and effort that it leaves the
individual so worn out at the end of every day that he is not able to
think clearly, or to render much service to himself or to his friends.
He is simply a run-down machine and must be recharged for the next
day’s work.
In one of the American cities a group of nineteen girls formed
themselves into a Bible study class, and met at the Young Women’s
Christian Association building on Thursday nights. A light, inexpensive
dinner was served and the pastor of one of the churches was asked to
teach the group. All of these girls were members of the church and were
engaged in work in the city. One was in a secretarial position, four
were stenographers, two were saleswomen, and thirteen were employed
in a department store. The hours of work were long for the majority of
the class. On Saturday nights they were forced to work overtime. The
average wage for the group was $7.25 a week. Out of this they had to
buy their food, pay for their rooms, buy their clothes, and pay their
car-fare. Whatever was left they could save or give away just as they
pleased. After the classes had been meeting for about six weeks, it
developed that only four of the girls went to church with any degree
of regularity. Ten of them gave as a reason for not going that they
were so tired on Sunday mornings that they could not do their work
and get up in time to go to church. When they did get up, there were
dozens of hooks and eyes and buttons that had to be sewed on, clothes
which had to be mended, and the week’s washing to be done. In telling
of their experiences one girl said, “Sunday is really my busiest day.”
These girls can be taken as typical of a large number of workers, men
and women. Life to the majority becomes simply the performance of
labor. Work is the whole end of existence. All brightness and cheer is
squeezed out by the compulsion of labor.
In a Pennsylvania coal town the employees of the company live in a
little village built around the coke ovens. There is not a green thing
in the whole village. A girl from Pittsburgh married one of the men
who was interested in the mines. They moved to this town, and she took
all her wedding presents and finery with her. In three weeks the smoke
had ruined her clothes, had made the inside of her little home grimy,
and the dirt and soot had ground itself into the carpets and floor,
till she said, “I feel that all the beautiful life that Frank and I had
planned to live together has become simply an incidental adjunct to the
coke-ovens.” We often hear it said that the minds of people are stolid,
stodgy, or indifferent, and that they do not appreciate the best things
in life. The wonder is that the masses of the people appreciate them as
much as they do.
=The Purpose of Life.= A well-known catechism teaches that, “The
chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Herbert
Spencer says, “The progress of mankind is in one aspect a means of
liberating more and more life from mere toil, and leaving more and
more life available for relaxation, for pleasure, culture, travel, and
for games.” The struggle for existence consumes so much time that it
becomes an end in itself. This ought not to be. The true purpose of
life is not work, nor wealth, nor anything else that can be gained by
human striving, but it is life itself. Therefore, the work that people
do ought to contribute to an enrichment of life. We are indebted to
Henry Churchill King for the splendid phrase, “The fine art of living.”
William Morris said that whatever a man made ought to be a joy to the
maker as well as to the user, so that all the riches created in the
world should enrich the creator as well as those who profit by the use
of the riches. Under the old form of production, where every man did
his own work with his own tools, it was easy for him to take pleasure
in the thing that he was making. The factory system breaks the detail
of production into such small parts that no one worker can take very
much pride in the actual processes of his work. It is not a very
thrilling thing to stand by a machine and feed bars of iron into it
for ten hours a day, and to watch the completed nuts or screws dropping
out at the other end of the machine. The pleasure in the work must be
secured from the conditions under which the work is performed--the
cooperation in the production, and the feeling that the worker is a
part, and is being blessed by being a part, of the modern industrial
system.
=Specialization in Work.= Specialization has been carried so far that
to-day there are very few skilled workers in the sense in which this
term was used several years ago. Shoemakers very rarely know how to
make shoes, for they now make only some one part of the shoe. The
automobile industry, by methods of standardizing, is organized so that
each worker performs some simple task. He repeats this over and over,
but his task added to that done by the others, produces an automobile.
In the glove factory one set of workers spend their lives making
thumbs; another group stitch the back of the gloves. In the clothing
industry some make buttonholes, others sew on buttons; some put in
the sleeves, and others hem; each has a very small part to do. This
specialization in industry has been carried so far that it is seldom
that a worker knows anything about the finished product.
A study of the organization of labor shows to what extent
specialization has been carried. One of the chief complaints of the
American manufacturer is that his men and women are not loyal. There is
undoubtedly ground for this complaint, but on the other hand it must be
conceded that it is very difficult for a worker--in the garment trade,
for instance--to be loyal to a long succession of buttonholes; and for
glovemakers to be loyal to a multitude of thumbs. The lack of loyalty
comes largely from the failure of the directors of modern industry to
bring their workers into that relationship with the business which
would give them a feeling that they are an essential part of the
industry. Loyalty grows by what it feeds on. The specialization that
has been going on has been the very force which has made the worker
simply a part of the machine, and as such, detaches him from the
business of which he ought to feel himself an integral part.
=Unity of the Workers.= The extent to which specialization has been
developed has had another effect. While the process of differentiation
has been carried on at a rapid pace, and the individual worker has
known but little about the finished product, he has come to know a
great deal about the other disintegrated units in the workshop, the
mine, the factory, and the mill. Consequently, with the differentiation
in the work there has been a growing solidarity or feeling of unity
among the workers themselves. Evidence of this is found in the
philosophy that there are only two classes of people in the world, the
people who work and the people who do not work, and which is used by
the revolutionary groups with tremendous force. We do not like to think
of classes in America, but the forces of industrial life have created
classes in spite of ourselves.
=A World Apart.= The workers live in a world apart. Unconsciously they
drift together. They talk each other’s language; they understand each
other’s point of view. In every town and city we find groups of the
workers living to themselves. The work which men do inevitably groups
them together; and social life centers so completely about their work
that it is really the factory and mill that mark out the lines and
define the limits within which the classes must live. Consequently,
in our American cities we find such designations as these: “Shanty
Town,” “Down by the Gas Works,” “Across the Tracks,” “Murphy’s Hollow,”
“Tin-Can Alley,” “Darktown,” “On the Hill,” “Out by the Slaughter-Pen,”
“Over on the West Side,” and “Down in the Bottoms.” Just think of
your own town, and you probably can add some new phrase that tells
where your laboring group lives. In one Western town the community
was divided by the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. The boys in the
school on the north side of the tracks were all known as “Sewer Rats.”
On the opposite side of the town they were known as “Depot Buzzards.”
Whenever one group met the other there was always a war. A friend tells
of a similar condition in a Canadian village where the Scotch boys were
banded against the Irish and the Irish against the Scotch. Whenever
the Macks met the Micks, or the Sandys met the Paddys, there was a
row. A large part of this classification is temporary and need not be
considered very seriously. Underlying it, however, is the deeper fact
that we have come to recognize that there is a world of the workers,
and that it is a world apart. In this world of the workers the rewards
and the profits of toil are barely adequate to take care of the needs
of the families of the workers.
It is assumed that in pre-war times it required from $800 to $900 a
year to support a family in the average American community. Since
1914 the cost of living has increased approximately 60 per cent. It
is estimated that even to-day with the advances that have been made
in the wages by nearly all industries, 61 per cent. of the workers of
America are receiving an average wage of less than $800 a year. “Shanty
Town” and that section “Down by the Gas Works” have been built of poor
material and allowed to become dilapidated not because the people
living there like that sort of thing, but because the returns for the
labor of these people are totally inadequate for their needs. The
housing and living conditions of the people who live in the world of
the workers is determined by the wages which they receive.
[Illustration:
McGraw-Hill Company.
The work which men do inevitably groups them together.]
=The Interdependence of All.= Now, if we do recognize that the
world of work is a world apart, we must not fail to recognize also
that behind this disintegration that has been going on, there is an
integration of society more comprehensive than we have ever known
before in the history of the world. While the people may be allowed
to live by themselves in a part of the town that is less desirable as
a dwelling-place than other parts, yet we are all dependent one upon
the other. There is an old story which illustrates this point. A boy
complained to his father about being poor and said that he wished that
he had been born in a rich man’s home. The father told him that he
was mistaken, for he really had wealth which he had never considered.
That night the boy had a dream. It seemed to him that there came and
stood at his bed a little fellow dressed like a farmer. The boy asked
him who he was. He replied that he was the soul of all the farmers
that were working to produce the flour that went into bread. Another
little figure appeared beside the first, a black man with a turban on
his head; he was the spirit of the workers in the tea and spice
gardens of India. Another black man dressed in the rough clothes of a
day-laborer joined the others; he was the spirit of the workers on a
Southern plantation who make the cotton and produce the sugar. Other
workers appeared so fast that the boy could hardly keep up with their
approach--the coal-miner, the iron-miner, the woodsman, the carpenter,
and the girl workers in the flax-mills of Dublin, who produce the linen
in the rough, red-checked tablecloths. When they had all gathered
together there was a multitude, and all were in reality the servants of
this one boy.
Our dependence upon each other was clearly illustrated in the shut-down
of non-essential industries on certain days in the winter of 1917-18.
In order to keep people from starving and freezing, the government of
the United States ordered the suspension of certain industries so that
the conservation of fuel might protect the lives of the people.
=The Good Neighbor.= We are “members one of another.” The basic
industries provide the necessities of our lives--feeding, housing,
clothing, warmth, means of traveling, and the things which are part
and parcel of our very being. The workers who are engaged in producing
these things are true servants of humanity, and we are all under deep
and abiding obligations to them. Just in the proportion that we produce
something that adds to the wealth and happiness of the world, we are
discharging the obligation which others by their labors have placed
upon us. The division into classes, and the setting off of groups by
themselves, the creating of the world of labor as a world apart, makes
the practise of neighborliness a difficult thing. Now neighborliness
is the very essence of Christianity. To be a friend of man ought to
be the supreme desire of every individual. In the parable of the
Good Samaritan Jesus defined the meaning of Christianity in terms of
neighborliness. The church must answer this question: How can Christian
people be good neighbors in modern industrial society?
=Neighbor to the Group.= We recognize the call to neighborliness in
individual cases. If a man is knocked down by an automobile when he
is crossing a street, people will run to help him to his feet, will
call a cab or an ambulance, and he will be cared for just as carefully
by the stranger as if he were a near relative. The individual idea
of neighborliness is thoroughly appreciated. We have learned how to
practise it. When it comes to a group, however, we find it difficult.
The same men that would rush into the street to help an individual that
is hurt, will live in a community and not appreciate the needs of the
people living in the same block. The industrial class may be knocked
down by adverse social conditions, and no one will recognize just what
the situation means; or, recognizing it, will know how to apply the
remedy, or even how to offer intelligent assistance.
In a small city in Ohio there lived an old man and his wife. Their
children had married and moved away, leaving the old people to shift
for themselves. The man was nearly blind and his wife was paralyzed
and unable to take care of herself. The neighbors used to go to see
them once in a while but no one felt any special responsibility for
them and the community knew very little about the conditions under
which they lived. One of the neighbors remarked one day that he had not
seen anybody around the house and no smoke coming from the chimney.
An investigation was made and it was found that the old man had been
dead three days and was lying in bed with his paralyzed wife who could
not help herself, nor could call for assistance. For three days she had
been suffering unspeakable agony beside the form of her dead husband.
The whole community was shocked. No one could believe that such a lack
of neighborliness could exist. No one was particularly to blame; it was
merely one of those things that occur because the man and his wife had
dropped out of the main-traveled path of the city’s life.
The church is making every effort to meet the needs of the individual,
but when it preaches the need of regeneration, it must meet the group
needs as well, and the minister of a church for a world of labor must
be minister to the group as well as to the individual. The world war
has impressed upon us many facts, none with more insistence than
this--that we are living in a very small world; and that nations, as
well as groups of people everywhere, must learn to appreciate each
other for what they are, and for the contribution which they are making
to the well-being of humanity. Recognizing this, however, does not mean
that we are all to try and think alike, to be alike, or to live alike.
As Americans we are very likely to think that our way of doing things
is entirely right, and that enlightenment comes in proportion to the
degree in which other people copy our example in clothes, methods of
living, and even our manner of speaking.
=A Specialized Program for Group Needs.= The church’s program for a
world of work must be a specialized program. It must be based upon a
thorough knowledge of the facts incident to the life of the people, an
appreciation of their view-points, and must take into consideration
the ultimate ends to be achieved, the means by which these ends can be
reached, and a willingness to subordinate the program of the church
to the needs of the group. The program of a city church appealing to
well-to-do, middle-class people, will utterly fail in the average rural
community. A program for a mining community must consider the needs as
well as the character of the miners, and the quality of their work. The
church is sharply challenged by the specialization in industry, and by
the fact that there are classes who do not hear, or at least fail to
heed its appeal. In the growing demand for democracy, the church must
not only be the most democratic of all institutions but it must be the
leader in setting before the people the ideals and in keeping before
their minds the great ends of democracy.
=Approach to the Subject.= In the following chapters are set forth
some of the conditions under which the workers in the basic industries
toil and live; also the great needs of each group and what the church
is doing, what it ought to do, and what it can do. We will consider
each group in relation to the contribution it makes to the life of us
all. Food is a first need of each individual, therefore, we will study
the rural workers first, for they are the ones who feed the world.
Next we will study the makers of our clothing; then the mines, for
they provide for our warmth and shelter; then the steel workers, who
are the real builders of our material civilization. We are a restless
race, and demand the labor of thousands of men and women to move us
from place to place, so we will study the lives of these providers of
transportation. We will also think together of that large group who
amuse us and who labor to produce the luxuries which we enjoy. There
are certain groups that we will find in each of these larger groups,
such as the seasonal workers, the women in industry who toil. We will
take a glimpse at these.
=Men and Things.= Men produce things, and often the created thing
seems to become greater than its creator. We will hope through these
discussions to show that man is infinitely greater than all the things
which he produces. We will also endeavor to arrive at some decision
as to what constitutes a proper message and ministry for the church
in the midst of a world of work, so that working men and women may
be protected in their toil, and freed from the incessant and always
present danger of becoming slaves to the wealth they create.
CHAPTER II
THE WORLD OF THE RURAL WORKERS
There have grown up on the western plains of Canada a number of large
cities and a great many small villages and towns. These are the direct
results of a process of civilization dependent upon the fertile soil
from which vast quantities of wheat are reaped each year. Just before
harvest the sea of grain extends as far as the eye can see. The first
settlers built their little cabins, bought as much seed grain as was
available, and planted it; doing nearly all of the work themselves.
Improved methods of planting and harvesting have added thousands of
acres to the wheat-fields. Railroads have been built to carry the wheat
to the great shipping and milling centers. Cities such as Winnipeg
have grown rich through being the connecting-links between the farmer,
with his field and his wheat, and the breakfast tables all over the
civilized world.
=Our Daily Bread.= The development of the grain-belt of western Canada
is similar to that which has taken place in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and
other Northwestern states. In California, Oregon, Washington, Oklahoma,
and Kansas we find great areas devoted to the growing of wheat. The
wheat that is put on the market is of two general varieties: what is
known as winter wheat sown in the autumn, and spring wheat that is
sown early in the spring. These great wheat areas have been called the
bread-basket of the Western world. Few of us realized the importance of
wheat to the life of the world until Mr. Hoover began to tell us that
we must save it by having wheatless days and by eating more corn bread
and war-breads of various kinds. The total annual consumption of wheat
is 974,485,000 bushels, and of this amount the United States produced,
in 1917, 678,000,000 bushels. The needs of the world have been figured
as calling for about 20 per cent. advance upon all that is available
under normal conditions.
Not many of us who live in cities stop to consider the man who made
possible the roll or the piece of white bread that we eat with our
meal. We forget the long day’s work, the painstaking toil, and the
grim struggle of the pioneers who first worked the land. We seldom
think of the planting and reaping year after year, the construction of
transportation, the building of warehouses, the venturing of money in
mill-building, until finally were developed not only the vast farms but
also cities, railroads, wheat-carrying steamship lines, elevators, and
the mills that go to make up the great bread-making industry. Only when
the war interfered with the processes and threatened to cut off the
supply of wheat, did we begin to realize how important the wheat farm
is to the very life of the nation. If bread is the staff of life, wheat
is the chief material out of which that staff is made. Other grains
when used for bread, as we are forced to use them to-day, are all
substitutes for wheat.
[Illustration:
Press Illustrating Service.
Not many of us stop to consider the man who made possible the white
bread that we eat at our daily meals.]
=The Cane-Sugar Makers.= If we travel in a direction a little east of
south from the wheat-fields of Canada, we come to the great plantations
of Louisiana and Mississippi where sugar-cane is grown. Here we
find people of a different type living under different conditions.
Sugar-cane is grown in fields that have been won from the swamps by
hard toil. In this rich soil, cultivated and ridged by the plow, the
sugar-cane is laid in long parallel rows. After it has been buried a
few days it begins to sprout, and from each one of the joints on the
stalk of cane there grows up a new plant. These are tilled and come to
maturity in October. The stalks grow from eight to fifteen feet high
and at harvest-time are cut down and then stripped of their leaves by
the workers, who take them up in their hands and with a flat knife
slash off the long, bladelike leaves, leaving them clean and smooth.
The stalks are piled in rows to be picked up later and put into wagons,
taken to the siding, loaded into freight-cars, and hauled to the mill,
where they are crushed between rollers, and the juice pressed out.
The liquid so obtained is then put into large vats and evaporated,
leaving brown sugar and molasses. The crude or brown sugar is sent to
the refinery and passed through various processes until we get the
white sugar that comes to our tables. Practically all of the work on
the sugar plantation is done by Negroes. These people live in small
cabins and work for a very small wage, ranging from 75 cents to a $1.25
a day. Their tiny houses, which are usually whitewashed and surrounded
by a little plot of ground, are the property of the owners of the
plantation. The Negro is expected to buy everything from the company’s
stores. The prices are high and it is rarely that one finds a family
that is not in a perpetual state of debt to the owner of the plantation.
When the migration of Negroes from the South to the North began some
few years ago, a great concern was felt in many quarters as to what
the result would be. A meeting was held in one of the Southern cities
and the Negroes were invited to be present. One of the Negroes said:
“If you let me tell you what I think, it is about like this. We-all
have been working here for about 75 cents to $1 a day, but we never
see the time when we have any money of our own. It takes more than we
make for the things we use. Folks in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and
Massachusetts offer us $15 to $18 a week, tickets for ourselves and our
families, and a free house to live in with two weeks’ rations provided
and in the house. Now none of us wants to leave Louisiana, and if you
want to keep us here just raise our wages to $2 a day. We would a heap
rather stay here than go North.”
=Sugar from Beets.= Not all the sugar that comes to our tables is made
from the cane; in fact only a small proportion is cane-sugar. Most of
it is produced from the beet which is grown in large quantities in
the West. Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and California are the
extensive sugar-beet producing states. The beets grow to an enormous
size; they are planted in rows and cared for much as the beets that
grow in our vegetable gardens. In California the Japanese are entering
very largely into the sugar-beet culture.
The beet-fields call whole families to work. Several towns in the
Northwestern states have sections made up entirely of Russians, and
people from other lands, who have been attracted by the opportunities
for employment offered by the beet industry. One family consisting of a
father, mother, thirteen children, and the mother’s sister worked all
last summer in one of the beet-fields. The youngest child was only five
years old but he put in long hours every day. This family is typical of
many. The statistics regarding child labor in the United States show
that the vast majority of children employed in gainful labor are the
children in the rural districts. Thus sugar comes to your table through
two sources: from the workers, including a large number of children, in
the beet-fields and the workers on the Southern plantations.
=The Corn Belt.= In the Middle states we have the great corn-producing
areas. A great deal of the philosophy of this region is summed up in
the reply of a farmer to the question as to why he was planting more
corn than usual. He said: “So that I can feed more hogs.”
“What will you do with the hogs?” he was then asked.
“Sell them and buy more land to plant more corn to raise more hogs to
buy more land.”
The price of hogs and the price of corn, in normal times, keep on a
level with each other. When corn is high pork is high, and when corn
falls we find that pork falls with it.
=Food and the Land.= It is impossible within the limits of this book
to give more than a glimpse of a few of the great food-producing
industries of America. The packing-houses and canneries contribute
their share to the feeding of the people; but when all is said and
done, we get back to the fact that even in this age when factory and
city make claims, all values finally rest on the land. The growth of
our cities has emphasized their dependence upon the country. People
in the city must be fed, and the food comes from the soil. It is now
claimed that the gravest mistake made by Kerensky, a leader of the
Russian revolution, was in not giving sufficient attention to the food
question in Russia. After the revolution became a fact Kerensky tried
to spur the army to greater activity, but the people, unused to the new
ways of freedom, failed to keep up the processes that would produce
food. The railroads were congested; fuel was scarce; lacking fuel--the
railroads and boats still further failed in their undertaking. The
result was that the food supply became less and less in Petrograd and
other centers. Behind the lines hungry people grew restless. Leon
Trotzky would not have succeeded in overthrowing Kerensky but for the
hunger of the people. These people were willing to accept any change
of government because there was at least a hope, however desperate it
might be, that the new government would furnish the food which they
needed so badly. One writer dealing with this subject said: “Oratory
and precepts failed to feed the hungry people.”
We have heard over and over again the phrase, “An army travels on its
stomach.” It is also true that the civilian population of a country
lives and labors on its stomach. Food is the foundation of life.
“Give us this day our daily bread” is the first demand of man upon
God and upon his fellow man. The solution of all our problems depends
finally on the question of bread. “Who shall be king?” The answer to
this question is very likely to be, “The one who will give us bread.”
The peace of the world must finally be based upon an appreciation of
economic values. Justice means that conditions will be such that in
each nation food for all the people will be produced in abundance.
=The Country and the City.= Much has been said of the freedom and
independence of farm life. The producer of food is a real benefactor of
the race. The farmer works in the open air and lives a simple life, and
so gains an opportunity for developing the very finest traits of human
character. But when we compare the changes that have been taking place
in the rural districts, we find strong reasons for the exodus from the
country to the city. The city offers a more interesting and profitable
life which makes it difficult to maintain the center of attraction on
the farm. The history of humanity began in a garden and ends in a city.
The word “city” comes from the old Latin word which means the citizen,
the place where the citizen lived.
The city is really the center of authority and governmental power.
It offers the best and at the same time the worst; has the best in
intellect, which it attracts and claims for its own, and it has the
best in amusement and entertainments. We have heard people say: “The
country is a good place in which to rest and work, but the city is
the place to have your fun.” The city has the best and the worst of
morals, and the best and the worst health conditions. Side by side with
the city mansion are the tumble-down hovels and the cramped, narrow
tenements that are a disgrace to our land. The robust, strong man
pushes his weaker fellow to the wall. The worst forms of disease and
the most acute physical suffering are found in the city. In the city
there are many intellectual giants and many half-sane intellectual
weaklings. The man dwelling in the country has a greater independence
than these. He can at least have three meals a day, and knows how to
take care of himself. Hundreds of thousands of people in our cities
have just brains enough and just education enough to do one thing;
if hard times throws one of these out of his job, he is left utterly
helpless--a derelict on the sea of humanity. The culprit is safer in
the city than in the thickest forest. Men without character and women
without principle huddle together in its sordid districts. The tides of
the city wash up queer specimens to the light of day, and reveal to the
passer-by the saddest and most gruesome sights, and the worst types of
humanity.
The best in the city is matched by the worst. Philanthropy cures, or
tries to cure, what rogues have created. Just as the incentive to
goodness in the city is highest, so the temptations to the opposite
course of life are of the strongest. The artificial life creates new
and unusual wants, and together with the excitement caused by city
conditions, makes temptations hard to resist. The city is the rich
man’s paradise and the poor man’s hell. The lure of the city is strong
upon us all. There are a thousand voices calling us there; and this
is impoverishing our rural districts and making the question of food
a more serious one every year. In the country one can plod along and
with the present prices be independent, but this does not satisfy. The
men of to-day think in thousands where their fathers thought in terms
of hundreds. Hundreds of dollars are made on the farm and millions in
the city. The city calls every young man and young woman. Everybody who
is at all familiar with the small towns knows that one of the hardest
facts which must be faced is that just as soon as the young people
finish school they leave for the city. Church work is made hard by the
continual drain on the best life in the community.
=The Tenant and the Absentee Landlord.= Over against this question of
the lure of the city there is that of the tenant farmer. The Industrial
Relations Commission, making its study of the rural conditions in
America, finds that there is a very grave danger that America will
produce a peasant class like that of some of the European countries.
The independent landowners are decreasing; in Mississippi 62 per cent.
of the land is tilled by tenants, in Louisiana 58 per cent., and Kansas
36 per cent. So many of the owners of the farms have moved to the
city that the actual production of food has been left to the people
who are known as “birds of passage.” Most of these tenants are here
to-day and gone to-morrow. The retired farmer presents the problem of
the absentee landlord. The tenant farmer suffers under the handicap
of his limitation, and his poverty is often his undoing. The absentee
landlord of the farm enjoys the fruits of the labor of another. We
must not forget, however, that the retired farmer has contributed his
share toward the development of our nation. He has helped to make his
community. The man who actually remains on the soil to produce the food
is producing less, and takes less interest in his community, than the
man who owns the land and who made a success of production in years
gone by. The tenant does not cultivate the land as intensively as it
can be cultivated; he does not attempt soil conservation, and takes but
little interest in the community and its institutions.
=Study of a Rural Community.= It is interesting to make a study of
the rural community and to compare present conditions with those of
the past. Such a study convinces one that the success of the church
is closely bound up with the economic situation of the community.
An investigation was made in three townships in the central part of
Wisconsin just a few miles from the state capital.[1] The land in this
section is rich, the homes of the people are comfortable, the barns and
sheds substantial, and everything about the farms well kept. Fences
are up and all the buildings are neatly painted. The land produces
anything that can be grown in a temperate climate: peas, grain, barley,
potatoes, oats, hay, cattle, sheep, and hogs. Other parts of Wisconsin
produce more milk and butter; but the large herds of Holstein cows and
the number of creameries and cheese factories found in this part of the
state convince the visitor that no small part of the farmer’s income is
derived from this source.
[1] Survey made by Social Service Department of Congregational
Churches, 14 Beacon Street, Boston.
The state university is the Wisconsin farmer’s best friend. Through
its instruction at Madison, its extension department, experimental
stations, and institutes held throughout the state, it shows this
friendship; and the splendid economic conditions found in rural
Wisconsin prove that this friendship is not wasted. The land in these
townships is valued at $100 to $150 an acre, but upon inquiry at a
dozen or more farms it was learned that no one knew of any farm land
that was for sale.
About 2,500 people live in the three townships described. Sixty
years ago nearly all the people were Americans, many of them having
emigrated from New York State. In later years the Americans have
been supplanted by Germans and Scandinavians. The old settlers now
lie at rest in the beautiful cemeteries which are taken care of by
the communities with the same care and affection that is bestowed
upon private homes and grounds. Many of the descendants of the first
settlers are scattered far and wide throughout the United States.
The Rev. Hubert C. Herring, Secretary of the National Council of the
Congregational Churches of the United States, and one of the best known
among home missionary leaders in America, was born and spent his early
life in this section of Wisconsin. The school he attended is at the
country cross-roads and near the school is the Presbyterian church
which he joined. Dr. Herring’s first efforts at oratory were practised
upon the neighboring boys and girls in the Philomathean Society, a
country debating society, at that time a leading social and literary
organization among the people of the community. Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
one of the most popular and prominent of the magazine and newspaper
writers, and who is well known to every reader in America, was born in
this same township. Twelve other people who are influential nationally
and internationally were born and reared in this community.
Most of the people hold their own farms and most of them have money
on interest in the bank. The few families who rent farms are working,
planning, and saving so that they can buy land and own their farms.
The school-buildings are adequate and the grounds well kept; the
teachers are efficient and intelligent; and the high school maintains
an advanced standard. The young people go directly from these schools
into the state university. Here, then, we have the material conditions
that would seem to guarantee success in the work of the church. There
is no poverty, and very few people can be said to be living on the
fringe of the community. There is no overcrowding on the part of the
churches, for there are only two American churches and they have a
parish twelve miles wide and fifteen miles long, and the pastor serving
both is the only English-speaking preacher in this whole district. Now
what are the facts? One of these churches was closed for a number of
years and now has services only once in every two weeks; the other was
also closed for a number of years. One church has a Sunday-school with
fifty members and a Christian Endeavor Society of thirty-six members;
the church service is attended by twenty-five to forty people. One of
the men in the community said: “Many of the people are foreign and have
their own churches, of which there are seven in this district; but they
have their troubles, for the children are breaking away from the old
churches as they have broken from the old languages, and are beginning
to come to our Sunday-school.” The community has a good moral record.
There has never been a saloon, except at one point, and the two saloons
that were located there were voted out years ago. The people are
home-loving and law-abiding, but the two churches are not as successful
as they were fifty years ago when they were filled at every service.
The first minister in the district was a graduate and honor man of
Williams College, and the church was the center of the community
life. People looked to the church, were helped and inspired; it
sent out teachers, preachers, and other men and women trained
in thoughtfulness, to enrich the world. Contributions of such a
range cannot spring from the conditions in which the church finds
itself to-day. What are the reasons? Some of the people blame the
universities. When the young people return from college they seem to
take no interest in the church. But the universities are really not to
blame. The church fills so small a circle in the community that when
the young man has finished his course at the university he cannot fit
himself back into the narrow groove of the church activities. In sixty
years the old methods of farming have changed. Tools and machinery are
of another type. Conditions on the farm are totally different, because
the farmers have recognized that new methods are demanded. When the old
settlers have their picnics and reunions, one of the older men shows
the young men how they used to “cradle” the grain. It is an interesting
thing, but compared to the modern reaper the cradle is simply an
archaic tool, and no man would think of harvesting his crop with it
to-day. The fields of the church life of rural Wisconsin and in other
sections of the country are “white to the harvest,” but the ministers
are forced to use the old-fashioned “cradle” in harvesting the whole
crop. The university is showing the church its opportunity and at the
same time pointing out its failure. In the particular locality under
discussion the churches have no program. Religion is limited to a very
small part of life. The farm demands all the time of the people during
six days of the week. On Sunday the work clothes are changed for Sunday
clothes and part of the day given over to the church. This is religion.
The line of demarkation between the sacred and the secular is much
more clearly drawn in the country than anywhere else. The average
minister of the country church is much more a man apart from the rest
of the community.
The program of the church must be made a part of the whole life of the
people. The church out in the districts where the people live who are
producing the food for the world is responsible in a large degree for
the pleasures of the people. Country people find it difficult to think
in terms of the community. It is hard for them to cooperate. The church
must shape its program with a clear understanding of the great facts of
the community life, and appeal primarily from this standpoint and not
simply from that of the needs of individuals.
Another rural study shows a community where 80 per cent. of the people
were living on land owned by somebody else. There were five churches,
and each of them was struggling for a pitiful existence. Less than
20 per cent. of the people had any connection with the church or any
other organization. A minister was sent into this district to make a
study of the situation with a view to possible work by the home mission
board of his church. In his report he stated that the needs there were
just as pressing and demanded just as much statesmanship as any field
in India or China. He was furnished with sufficient money to put up a
good church building, and the plans of the building provided for social
and game rooms. He brought a doctor into the community and attached
him to the church as a lay worker. He promoted an interest in better
farming methods, and began with organized groups a course of lessons
in thrift. Gradually this minister gained the interest of the boys
and girls through baseball, basket-ball, singing school, and other
community exercises and agencies. People began to come to church. They
wanted to hear this preacher, for as one of the farmers said, “A feller
who knows enough to talk about the things that we are interested in
must know something about heaven. I want to hear what he’s got to say.”
The church in this community succeeded, but its success was primarily
dependent upon the program that considered the economic needs of the
people, and studied to find a remedy for the bad, and to build up the
good.
=Socialism’s Message to the Church.= Socialism has been sneered at
as being a “stomach philosophy.” There is ground for this criticism,
for a great deal of socialism is purely materialistic; but the fact
that it interests itself in the feeding of the people is not a serious
fault. Socialism has emphasized many things that the church has failed
to appreciate. Consideration of the food problems and of the economic
basis of our civilization is something that the church cannot afford
to ignore. The great mass of workers who are producing the food of the
world are truly ministers to the needs of humanity.
=The World of Rural Workers.= Figures are dull or they would be
marshaled here to show that the producers of the world’s food live in
a world to themselves. There are many divisions in this world, and
many cross-sections of the life of the people. That the rural church
is not succeeding is evident. Its sons and daughters of the past
generation are the leaders in the world of finance, art, commerce, and
letters; but are the conditions within it to-day such that may produce
sons and daughters to fill the places of those who are now occupying
the positions of trust and honor? The call and the opportunity
of the church are urgent in that great part of the world of work
which produces the things that we eat. Shall those who feed others
themselves be denied the bread of life? It is a call for leadership,
for statesmanship, for planning, for devotion, for sacrifice, and for
heroic service.
CHAPTER III
THE WORLD OF THE SPINNERS AND WEAVERS
“Now when we cross this bridge, look north and you will see the soul
of our city symbolized in brick and mortar.” These were the words of a
business man who had taken an afternoon off and was showing his friend
the wonders of a New England city that had grown up about the textile
industry. The soul of the city, as he thought of it, lived in the huge
mills lining the banks of the canal which runs through the city. When
his friend looked, he saw more than the mills. He saw a road beside
the canal paved with cobblestones and, on the other side, the company
houses overshadowed by the mills and factories. The towers and huge
smokestacks threw shadows that completely covered the houses where many
of the workers lived.
So thoroughly is this city dependent upon the mills and their output
that a brilliant writer in a recent work of fiction said of it, that
if there were bridges and a portcullis you could easily think of their
being raised to protect the mills against an invasion from the workers;
just as in medieval times the feudal castles were protected by the moat
and bridge. The bells in the many towers and the siren whistles of the
mills call the people from sleep in the morning, telling them when
to begin work and when to quit. Within the mills are long lines of
machines set in parallel rows down which the workers easily pass. Each
worker tends eight to twenty machines. Here is a broken thread to be
tied, and there a new pattern to be set up. The clatter and roar of the
machinery is unceasing. It is a part of the composite voice of labor
that is sounding around the world. As the shuttles fly the finished
fabric is rolled up ready for inspection, and, when passed, goes to the
market, and later is made into garments.
It is a huge task to clothe the modern world. No one realizes how much
it means until he looks into the work of the textile-mills which have
grown up in our own and in other countries. Cities like Lawrence,
Lowell, and Fall River, Massachusetts, are what they are because of
their great factories. In these places they produce miles of cloth
every week.
=Men and Clothes.= Of all the animals in the world man is the only one
that provides himself with artificial covering. All the others have
perfectly fitting coats provided by nature, and these coats are adapted
to the conditions under which the individual animal is forced to live.
Man calls in the help of plant and animal life to supply himself with
clothing for his protection against the cold of winter and the heat of
summer. He also uses clothing as an adornment. We have come to consider
clothing as a badge of civilization and a mark of man’s superiority
to all the other animals. Those races that pay the least attention to
clothing are the lowest in the scale of civilization. Such races are
found in South America, in Central Africa, and on some of the islands
of the South Seas. There is scarcely a trace of civilization to be
found among them. They have a kind of community life, but they live in
a most primitive fashion. Their food consists chiefly of roots, plants,
fish, and game which can be easily secured. They have rude shelters or
crude huts; wear very little clothing; and their religion is a belief
in witches and evil spirits. Where they have idols they are of the
most hideous workmanship, representing in a most grotesque way bad
influences and vicious passions.
=The Materials.= The first clothing man wore was made from the skins of
animals and from the bark of trees. Later on it was learned that wool
could be spun, and that by using crude needles cloth could be sewed
together. Wool, silk, cotton, linen, paper, and many others materials
have come into common use. All of these are produced by groups of
people of whose working conditions we are in ignorance and whose very
existence is unknown to most of us. Among civilized people the use of
wool has grown to such an extent that the sheep-raising industry has
become one of the biggest businesses in all sections of America. The
sheep-herder lives a lonely life and yet rarely complains, and is never
happier than when out in the fields with his charges. At shearing time
the sheep are brought into a shed, and after a few futile struggles in
an effort to escape the process, they sit quietly head up while the
fleece is taken from them. When they go into the shed they are grimy
gray; after the shearing when they leave it they are a light yellowish
white. Thousands of people are employed in the wool industry; in
securing the product, spinning it, weaving it into cloth, and making it
into garments for our use.
Silk has been used for many centuries in the manufacture of garments.
A Chinese legend tells of a wife of one of the early emperors of China
who lived more than thirty-five centuries ago and who learned to make
silk from the cocoon of the caterpillar. From this discovery has come a
great industry. The caterpillar lives upon the leaves of the mulberry
tree, and it has to be fed and tended with infinite patience. The
process of gathering the cocoons and of preparing them for spinning is
a business that can be learned only by years of apprenticeship. Caring
for the caterpillar is a task that does not always appeal to people,
and yet it is one that engages the attention of a large number of
workers.
Cotton was first used in India, but its cultivation and manufacture
developed in three continents at just about the same time. In a Vedic
hymn written fifteen centuries before Christ reference is made to
“the threads in the loom,” which indicates that the manufacture of
cloth was already well advanced. Cotton was used in China one thousand
years before Christ. It was held to be so valuable that a heavy fine
was imposed upon any one who stole a garment or any piece of cotton
cloth. Alexander the Great found cotton in use when he invaded India,
and tradition says that it was he who introduced its use into Europe.
In Persia cotton was exclusively used before the days of Alexander.
Thousands of years before the invention of machinery for the making of
cotton cloth Hindu girls were spinning cotton on wheels, making it into
yarn, and using frail looms for weaving these yarns into textiles. The
beauty of the fabric was so striking that they were known as “Webs of
the Woven Wind.”
=Cotton and History.= Cotton has played a large part in the history of
the United States. It was just one hundred years after the discovery
of America that the first cotton plant was introduced into the land.
The short-staple cotton plant did not mean much until 1814 when an
enterprising New Englander assembled in one building the several
processes of spinning and weaving. His shop at Waltham was the first
complete cotton factory in the world. The South made the mistake of
turning its attention to the planting of cotton and allowing the North
to do the manufacturing. Cotton became an important factor only when
the cotton-gin was invented. This was in 1833. When cotton became
profitable, Negro slavery took on an added meaning. The value of cotton
was really the factor that led men to demand that slavery should
continue as a national institution.
=Why Increase Production?= Having secured the material suitable
to be made into cloth the next step was to improve the process of
manufacture. The first wool that was woven was rolled in the hand, made
into threads, and woven in a very crude loom. The task was a tedious
one, and the cloth was produced very slowly. But, as time went on, man
by practise learned more about weaving. He had been weaving linen from
flax in the days when the Pyramids were being built in Egpyt, but it
was not until the power-loom was invented that cloth-making could be
carried on as a profitable industry. Early man had just about all he
could do to provide himself with food, shelter, and the clothes that he
needed. To-day these things are provided in quantities sufficient for
all and with little exertion. Hence, we find the basis for the division
of labor. A machine for spinning cotton can produce enough thread in a
very few hours to make clothes for the families of all the men who are
interested in operating the machine. This thread is then turned over
to the operator of the power-loom; the machinery is started and the
cloth begins to roll itself up into a huge bundle. Very soon enough is
produced to clothe all of those who are interested and occupied with
this operation. The cloth is then turned over to the garment-makers
and the process of fashioning the clothes is carried forward so that
each individual has his or her part to perform; and in a very short
time there are enough garments fashioned and finished so that all the
garment-makers can be provided with clothes. Now comes the question
that is so often asked. If there is plenty of clothing for everybody,
why should some people not have clothes enough? If a man interested in
the production of cloth makes more than enough for him to wear, why
should he go on working? The answer to this is that, in the modern
world, man must trade off his specialized product in order to satisfy
his own needs and those of his family.
=The Machine.= The enterprise of clothing the world is made possible by
machinery. Man has never produced more marvelous results than in the
development of the intricate, huge, and costly machines which fashion
the fabrics from which we make our clothes. These tools give man a
thousand hands where before he had only two. If each person did only
a moderate amount of labor the people of every country that employed
machinery would be provided with all the necessities of life. A supply
could be insured without overworking any one, and a few hours’ work
each day would be enough. In that time all that is necessary for each
individual would be produced. The machine, then, is the instrument
that increases the possibility for leisure; by the multiplied
productive power it increases the number of things that a man may have,
and at the same time it enlarges his possibilities for leisure. We
accept the machine as we accept the weather. As a matter of fact it
is not at all certain that since the machine has been with us we have
been any happier because of the enormous production of our times. The
machine has carried on the divisions in our industrial life. The new
methods and improved devices save labor, time, and energy. At the same
time they increase the output. A man’s hand is no more mighty than it
was centuries ago, but backed by the tireless energy of machinery he
can with slight effort turn out a production that a story-teller would
not have credited to the mightiest giants of mythology.
The United States Bureau of Labor tells the story in figures. Five
hundred yards of checked gingham can be made by a machine in 73 hours;
by hand labor it would take 5,844 hours. One hundred pounds of sewing
cotton can be made by a machine in 39 hours; by hand labor it would
take 2,895 hours. The labor costs are proportionate. The increased
effectiveness of a man’s labor aided by the use of machinery, according
to these reports, varies from 150 per cent. all the way up to 2,000
per cent. Hence, we see that the machine is not so much a labor-saving
device as it is a production-making device. As has been said already,
it is man’s energy and strength multiplied many times. The machine has
become so potent that the question is, “What relation shall the created
thing be to the creator?” The machine sets the pace. The man or woman
working with it must follow. It is exacting, implacable, produces
through long hours; is set up in the midst of high temperatures, and
is utterly indifferent to the fate of the individuals operating it. It
works at night, it works by day and under conditions which are humanly
impossible; but human beings are forced to keep the pace. The textile
cities of America with their rows of tenements are practically built
by the machinery in the mills and factories. The system has grown up,
and men and women are forced to adjust themselves to this system. The
welfare and happiness of the individuals working at the machines are
very likely to be matters of secondary importance to the value of the
production of the machinery itself.
=The Workers.= At the present time in the United States there are about
1,000,000 people employed in all the textile industries and about
$500,000,000 a year paid in wages. About one and three quarter billions
is the total value of the production. The worker in these mills is a
worker and little or nothing else. The struggle for mere existence
takes so much of his time that he has slight opportunity and but small
inclination to take part in any social or civic affairs. He usually
lives in a tenement or in a barrack type of building provided by the
company for which he works.
=The Southern Mill Village.= In the Southern mill towns the companies
usually own all the houses in which the people live. These houses
are generally one-story buildings with a porch extending along the
entire front. All of them are alike, and most of them are painted
gray or drab. The streets of the mill village are unpaved and in
most places cut into gullies by the rains. In a few places running
water, bathtubs, electricity, and other modern conveniences have been
provided, but these are the rare exceptions. More often the houses are
barren of all comforts, and living is reduced to the lowest possible
terms. The mill village has ordinarily but one store and this is owned
or controlled by the company. The food eaten by the people is of the
simplest kind; corn bread, pork side-meat, and coffee make up the
staples of diet. Nearly all the members of the family work in the mill.
At an investigation made by a state commission in Atlanta, Georgia,
one of the men testified that he, his wife, five of his children, and
his wife’s sister all worked in the mill; there were three younger
children who stayed at home, the oldest one of the three acting as
housekeeper and nurse. The improvements that most people expect as a
matter of course, such as fire-proofing, sanitary plumbing, lighting,
heating, storage, bathing, and washing facilities are utterly unknown.
If you spent a day in one of these mill villages, you would find one
or two members in almost every family sitting on the porch of the
house and away from work because of sickness. If a neighbor happens
to pass, you would hear some such conversation as this: “Howdy? How
are you feeling?” “Poorly, thank you, I have never felt worse in my
life; my victuals just don’t seem to agree with me, an’ I just feel
like I was of no account.” The vitality of the people is being sapped
by the insanitary conditions under which they live. It was discovered
some years ago that hookworm is the cause of the illness that has been
preying upon these workers for generations. The dangerous worms thrive
in the midst of filth. A clean-up of the village and the building of
better homes almost certainly eliminates the disease and its cause.
The people of the mill village find most of their recreation in the
near-by city. Nearly all of the principal Southern cities have a number
of these villages contributory to it. In many a home the only piece
of finery is the tawdry dress made up in what is supposed to be the
latest style--certainly the most exaggerated style--and usually in the
most striking colors. This is the Sunday dress of the young lady of
the house. When she is ready for her day off in the city, her costume
will be completed by the addition of a hat of the most marvelous and
striking make and color.
=The Motion-Picture’s Contribution.= The motion-picture theater has
been a godsend to the people of the mill village. Most of these workers
are very ignorant. Hard living and incessant toil have deprived them
of the opportunity of attending school, and even if there were the
will to get an education, the schools have not been accessible in many
instances; consequently, the people have merely the rudiments of an
education, and many of them can neither read nor write. Hundreds of
homes in these villages have no books except an almanac and a Bible.
The needs of the workers are almost overwhelming, so that one hardly
knows where to begin even to tell about the changes that must be made
in a community before much benefit can be secured in the lives of the
individuals. The motion-picture has brought to these workers scenes
from the outside world and has enlarged their ideas of life. Any one
can understand the lesson a picture teaches.
[Illustration:
Copyright, H. C. White Company.
In the cotton-mills a worker is a worker and little or nothing else.]
The motion-picture furnishes amusement and recreation, and it gives
a glimpse of larger aims and new motives. The girls who dress up in
their fine clothes and gaudy hats and go to the city whenever they have
a chance are trying to express themselves. Inherently they have fine
traits of character, but out of their ignorance and lack of experience
they are unable properly to balance the proportion of color and style
and make these to fit in with the facts of every-day life. There is no
one to teach them; they are unable to go to dressmakers for advice, and
the people with whom they associate admire the kind of finery that they
wear. But when they see these pictures presented on the screen they get
a chance to know how people in other places really live and act. As one
girl said: “I only learned how to be a lady when I got to see ladies’
pictures at the movies.”
=Improvements.= Some of the mills have built model villages, have
furnished good schools, churches, playgrounds, and other recreational
features. There have been discouraging failures made in attempting
to lead the people to accept the better things; but the failures are
insignificant when compared to the successes that have been achieved by
the companies that have really had the welfare of the workers at heart.
One mill owner has put in the finest kind of equipment in the homes
of the people. The hours of labor have been materially reduced: first
they began with eight, now they have seven, and this reformer says that
he believes that they will be able to reduce the hours still further
and make the six-hour day the standard. He intends to put on four
shifts of workers for each twenty-four hours and believes that he will
get a better result than could be achieved even with the eight-hour
day. It is interesting to note that this man, by paying higher wages
than others and by reducing the hours of labor, has been able to
secure permanence among his workers; and at this period when other
mills are shorthanded, he has all the labor that he needs. “It is not
philanthropy but good sense” is his way of defining the splendid work
he is doing.
=Workers in the Northern Textile Cities.= In the Northern textile
cities we find a different situation, for most of the workers live in
tenements. The stores, shops, and theaters are built and operated with
the demands of the workers, rather than their needs in view. In one of
these textile cities the average wage is $11.25 a week. Consider the
case of just one family living in this city under these conditions.
The family lives in a tenement with barely room enough for the father,
mother, two daughters, and a son. The mother is devoted to the home;
the father is a loom-fixer in the mill and a member of the union. All
attend the Congregational church on Sundays. This man has been able
to send his children through grammar school. His wages are above the
average for the kind of work he is doing. The two girls started work
just as soon as they finished school. The son also went to work, but he
was so tired of the town where he had always lived that he went to New
York and secured a position there. Everything went well for many years,
and the prospects, while not bright for the future, were not especially
dark. Then trouble came. First, the father was sick, and his illness
dragged on through the whole winter, but by spring he was able to go
back to work. It was the beginning of the slack season, however, when
he applied for his old position. He went to work, but the wages were
not as good as they had been when he left. The daughters found that in
order to have any society they had to spend more money for clothes.
“You can’t expect us to dress in a dowdy fashion, for if we do we
never will have any friends,” was their assertion. Ten dollars was the
wage of one of the girls and eight dollars the wage of the other girl.
This amount did not go very far toward supporting them and buying the
necessary clothes, and gave but little chance for a good time. Nothing
was left to help the family fund. Before the winter was over a strike
was called and the father lost his position. The family now became
dependent upon the funds of the union to which the father belonged and
the small amount the girls could squeeze out of their wages.
The winter passed as do all other mundane things and the strike came to
an end. Those who were members of the union were not allowed to come
back. The managers of the mill proclaimed that they had won a great
victory for democracy and that the mill should be operated strictly
as an “open shop.” The father found that “open shop” meant a closed
shop to him until he tore up his union card and promised not to join
any other labor organization. This he did in order to go back to work.
He was forced to it, but he never quite gained the confidence of the
foreman, for he was a marked man. Added to the hard struggle for
existence with its attendant worries there is an increasing feeling of
bitterness in the heart of this man, because he knows that he is being
discriminated against for his former membership in the trade union. The
family lives on, as thousands of others in the neighborhood are doing,
but there is hostility toward the factory and all it represents. Not
all the workers in the mill have this experience. Some have managed
to save, and by good fortune have been able to save enough so that
they are fairly comfortable and independent, owning their homes and
living in comparative ease, although very simply. We must not think
for a moment that there is only one side to this life and that always
a disheartening one. The challenging thing, however, is that the men
and women who are actually operating the machines are nearly all living
harassed lives, with a heavy burden of trouble and worry, and are not
finding the pleasure that should come from work well done.
=The Machine and Human Happiness.= The machine has been hailed as a
savior from trouble and want. It promised happiness and well-being
to all mankind. This promise has not been fulfilled, for instead of
the prophecy of the future being one of cheer growing out of the
development of the machine, it is rather one of warning. The machine
has subordinated the man; thrust him aside and denied him a fair share
of the things he has helped to create. As one of our keen-minded
writers has said, “The machine has developed a new kind of slave and
doomed him to produce through long and weary hours a senseless glut of
things; and then forced him to suffer for lack of the very things he
has produced.”
=The Church and the Factory.= What about the church in the midst of the
factory city? The minister is no longer the most important personage in
town. The business man dominates the life of the community. The mill
has pushed itself into the place of influence once held by the church.
In one of the New England cities a factory has been built around three
sides of one of the oldest established churches. The church still
remains, embraced by this factory. It is a fit parable of the present
situation in the mill town. The church has a place but industry holds
the outstanding position.
One of the most interesting pieces of work undertaken in recent years
was that of a pastor in one of the mill villages in Georgia. He built
the church; put in club rooms and provided features that would appeal
to the people. At first the cotton-mill owners were favorably disposed
toward the undertaking. They supplied a portion of the money toward
erecting the building, and made a regular contribution for the support
of the enterprise. The rector of the church soon found that the young
people did not attend the social functions as much as he had hoped that
they would, and they were conspicuous by their absence from the Sunday
services. Upon inquiry, in addition to the usual reasons given by
people for not attending church, he found that it was principally the
economic factor that was at work against the church. Low wages and long
hours left the people without energy enough to take part in anything
that had to do with their culture or spiritual welfare. The sad thing
about it was that the minister soon found to his deep sorrow that even
his questioning of the people was resented by the authorities, who
began to refer to him as a trouble-maker and a busybody, and eventually
he was forced to resign his church and leave the community.
How is the church going to meet this situation? The church must
continue its helpful agencies, open its club rooms, offer opportunity
for play, for service, and for worship. But it must do more than
that, for it must be the champion of the people, help them to secure
a fair degree of leisure, and then direct them in a wise spending of
their leisure hours. Unless the church can do this, it can never be the
instrument for leading men and women in these communities to accept
Jesus as a personal Savior from sin.
CHAPTER IV
THE WORLD OF THE GARMENT MAKERS
Fifth Avenue in New York is one of the world’s great thoroughfares.
Years ago it was devoted exclusively to residential purposes. The
wealthy people built their homes along the lower end of the street.
As the city grew, these people followed the avenue north until at
the present time the finest homes in the city are located in the
neighborhood of Central Park in the upper reaches of the street.
Between Fourteenth Street and Washington Square there are now a number
of business houses, two fine old churches, and a portion of the city
that still retains the residential quality of dignity and worth. From
Fourteenth Street to Fiftieth Street the avenue is given over almost
exclusively to business. From Thirtieth Street to Fifty-seventh Street
are found the finest shops and stores in New York City. Below Thirtieth
Street this stately avenue, and the numbered cross streets for many
blocks running east and west have been invaded by great skyscrapers
known as loft buildings in which is being carried on the greatest
garment-making industry in the world.
The workers in the garment trade in New York are nearly all Jews and
Italians. At any time of the summer and winter thousands of these
workers will be Found spending their leisure on the street between
twelve and one o’clock. When the workers are free it is almost
impossible to pass along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth
to Twenty-third Street. This solid mass of men and women, all speaking
a tongue that is unintelligible to American ears, pass round and round,
back and forth, up and down, a resistless tide typifying the steady
resistless rise of labor to a position in society where it must be
considered.
These big loft buildings occupied by the garment-making industry
have been constructed in recent years, and so rapidly have they been
erected that the storekeepers and business men of upper Fifth Avenue
have formed an organization and are exerting every effort “to save the
avenue from this advancing tide of foreign workers.”
[Illustration:
Press Illustrating Service.
When the workers are free it is almost impossible to pass along the
sidewalks of Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street.]
Many shops and department stores have been forced to give way before
the onward sweep of this enterprise. The area in New York occupied
most exclusively by the garment workers is about a mile long and about
one-half mile wide; in this district there are thousands of workers
employed exclusively in making garments of one kind and another. The
Garment Makers’ Union has a membership of 60,000. How much do we know
about these workers? When the Triangle Shirt Waist Company’s loft
caught fire and scores of girls were burned to death or killed by
jumping from the building, the country was shocked, but up to that time
we had not known that thousands of girls work every day behind closed
and locked doors. We have almost forgotten the incident. Where was the
factory? What was done about it? The girls were, however, our servants
working at the task of furnishing us with clothes!
=Fashion and Clothes.= In the last chapter we considered the workers
who produce the material from which clothes are made. The question that
is still of vital significance to most of us is, how shall we make our
clothes? “I have not a thing to wear,” is a very common statement, yet
it does not mean what it says, for the people that use this complaint
most frequently are the ones who have literally trunks full of clothes.
What they mean is that they have nothing in the latest fashion. Fashion
is a hard taskmaster. Some one has said that the length of the stay of
a society woman at any hotel can be determined by the number of gowns
she brings with her to the hotel. “She would no more think of wearing
the same gown twice to the same place than she would think of insulting
her best friends,” was a woman’s description of her companion to prove
that she was a “real lady.” The frequent changes in style bring rich
returns to the manufacturers of clothing and call for a ceaseless outgo
by people who feel that they are obliged to follow the dictates of
fashion. “I hate rich people,” said a little shop-girl. “For every time
I see a woman wearing a fine dress I cannot help thinking how hard I
work and how useless the dress is for any practical purpose.”
=Dressmaking in the Home.= Dressmaking was at one time carried on
entirely within the family. It was a domestic employment. The only
garments that were made outside of the home were men’s clothes, and the
journeyman tailor was a skilled mechanic. He made the entire garment
himself; but even in this industry very often the work was carried on
in his home and all the members of the family assisted more or less.
=The Sweat-Shop.= The sweat-shop, in most cases, is a home that
has been turned into a factory. The father or mother goes to the
manufacturer of clothing and agrees to furnish so many pairs of pants
or waists or shirts for so much money. The worker carries these
garments to the home and all the family go to work upon the job. Many
of these homes are one-room affairs, so that in many instances the work
is carried on in the room where the cooking is done; where the meals
are eaten and where the family sleeps. Legislation has done much to
eliminate the sweat-shops, and sweating as a system is under the ban.
Every church and every individual in the church ought to know all about
the work of the National Consumers’ League. This organization inspects
factories and workshops and issues a stamp or label that is attached to
all garments made under clean, humane, healthful, and fair conditions.
Information can be secured by writing to Mrs. Florence Kelly, 289
Fourth Avenue, New York. Look for this label when you buy any garment.
Low wages make possible the continuation of the sweat-shop system.
In a family where the wage-earner receives less than enough for its
subsistence, or for some reason or other the earnings are decreased
to a rate at which the family cannot live, it becomes necessary to
supplement the family income. Wife and children go to work, boarders
and lodgers are taken into the home, and the standardization of living
is so lowered that normal conditions of home life are impossible. In a
study made of the garment trades it was found that in the homes where
work is being done for a profit only about 11 per cent. of the husbands
in these families earned $500 or more a year, while more than one half
of them earned $300 or less a year.
=The Task System.= A study of conditions in the dressmaking industry
was made by the United States government. The results of this study
showed that we never can get back to the old state of affairs. We have
entered into a new period of production and this must continue. The
task system prevails in a large number of the garment-making shops.
By the task system is meant that the work on a garment is done by a
team of three persons consisting of a machine-operator, a baster, and
a finisher. Every three teams have two pressers and several girls to
sew on the pockets and buttons that are necessary for the completion of
the garment. There is essentially a fine adjustment within the team,
so that each one completes his work in time to pass it on to the next
one as soon as the latter is ready to receive it. A certain amount of
work is called a task, and this amount is supposed to be done within a
day. Forced competition has gradually increased the amount of the task,
until frequently even with the most strenuous activity the task cannot
be completed without working twelve and fourteen hours a day. The wages
paid are based upon the utmost that the best individual in the team can
do in a day.
This system came in with the influx of the Jews into New York in the
early eighties. These workers, with their intense desire to accumulate
money, get on in the world, and then be emancipated from hard work,
are peculiarly adapted to the system. Just as soon as a few of the
workers save enough money they become proprietors of small factories.
Another thing that enters into the situation is the characteristics of
the people themselves. Jews are a restless race and resent the rigid
routine and supervision of the factory, but the comparative freedom in
a small shop under the task system appeals to their desires to get on
in the world and gives them a degree of freedom which they cannot have
under the factory system. The task system lends full opportunity for
the cupidity of worker and owner to exploit other workers, and in the
end every man in the shop comes to be looked upon as an opportunity for
more profits.
=The Modern Factory.= Another stage in the evolution of the clothing
industry is found in the factory itself. Just as the task system was
an improvement over the sweat-shop in the home, so the factory is a
big advance over the task system. The factory has grown very rapidly
owing to the demand for tailor-made clothes, to the continual change
in the styles, and to the large supply of cheap labor always at hand.
In recent years the demand for men’s and women’s ready-made clothes
has so increased that now large department stores which formerly sold
only cheap grades of ready-made clothes are stocking up with expensive
garments in order to cater to the class of customers who used to order
their clothes directly from the custom tailor.
This movement toward standardizing the clothing industry aids the
factory in overcoming the competition of the smaller shops. There is
going on a sure but slow movement toward the elimination of the bad
conditions in the garment trades, and the factories are increasing
because people of even moderate means are demanding higher-priced and
better-grade garments. “I got such a wonderful bargain to-day, you
just ought to see the shirt-waists that are being sold for one dollar
and seventy-five cents. Why, you couldn’t even buy the material for
that price, to say nothing of the work and trouble of making it.” This
is an accurate report of a conversation overheard on a street-car one
evening. It sounds familiar to you, now, doesn’t it? When you got your
bargain, did you ever consider the girls who work to make you that
waist? The manufacturer is not alone responsible for bad conditions. It
is impossible for him to pay good wages and continue in business unless
he can sell his goods at a decent profit. If you force him to compete
with the sweat-shop, you drive him out of business and subsidize the
sweat-shop at the same time.
Our selfishness in desiring to get the best possible bargains makes us
thoughtless partners of the exploiters of the men and women who are
working to make our clothes. Progress costs money, time, and thought.
We are all bound together and go forward or backward with the group.
Next time you buy a dress or a suit, try to picture the girls and men
who worked on it. Consider the hours of labor which they spent and the
responsibilities that rest upon them; then figure against the price
which you are paying a fair proportion of the cost for wages to these
workers, and ask yourself would you be willing to make the garment for
that price? If you would not, providing, of course, that you had the
skill, you are not playing fair with your sister and brother who live
somewhere and are being cheated out of a decent wage.
=Groups by Races.= The workers in the garment industries in New York
live in groups made up not by industrial conditions or interests
so much as by racial interests. The Jews tend to live in certain
quarters of the city confined to themselves, and the Italians have
their quarters also. As a family accumulates a little money, plans are
made to move out of these sections in lower New York and to settle in
different surroundings in the upper part of the city, on Lexington
Avenue or in the Bronx.
=Seasonal Work in the Garment Trade.= In spite of the tremendous
advance made in late years in these industries in matters relating to
conditions of work, such as the eliminating of excessive overtime,
shortening of the regular hours of labor, and raising rates or
earnings, the matter of unemployment is still a serious problem. The
garment trades are affected by seasonal demands. Everybody wants a new
suit at just about the same time. “If I cannot have my spring suit by
Easter, I would just as soon not have it at all,” was the complaint
of a young girl whose family was trying to make retrenchments during
war time. The improvement in conditions has been marked; but in no way
has it been found practicable to lengthen the work season. And since
payment by the piece is widely prevalent in the clothing industries, in
the case of home workers a record of the time and the payment is not
strictly kept, and statistics are not available.
=Health Conditions.= The health conditions among the workers in the
garment industries show an interesting relationship to the wages paid
and the method of payment. The United States Public Health Service,
reporting on conditions among the garment-workers in New York City,
states that the strain was more prevalent where wages were paid on the
piece basis than by the week or other time basis. With the increased
use of machinery another series of health hazards appears, according
to this report. These are the result of fatigue and overstrain caused
by the close application to the same process through long hours. The
monotony of the work contributes to the bad industrial conditions. At
its best the wage of the garment-worker is pitiably small. Among the
girls, especially, there is keen competition. They cut one another
down, and they underbid and undersell each other. The average wage
paid barely affords a living. One little Italian girl in a recent
shirt-waist strike in New York said, “Me no live verra much on
forta-nine cent a day.” This wage of forty-nine cents it must be said
is not usual, and is largely the result of the ignorance of the girl,
but there are others like her who are forced to go to work unprepared
and therefore are unable to earn a better wage.
In many communities there still lingers the employment of the women and
children in home trades, making garments under sweat-shop conditions.
The contractor who formerly depended for his living upon letting out
his work to the sweat-shops has largely disappeared; but there are
still many homes in which work is done and no serious attempt has been
made as yet to reach the evils incident to it. Here the workers are
driven by the pressure of poverty to labor under conditions and for
wages that destroy life, and to work their children in the same manner.
Here disease breeds and is passed on to the consumer.
A recent study of the home conditions shows that the worst abuses of
child labor linger in this remnant of family work. No child labor law
that has been passed in the United States seems to be adequate to the
situation. To control this there must be a special provision made in
the factory laws of each state regarding the work done by families in
their own homes. Several of the states do provide in their laws that
no work for pay shall be done in the homes except by the members of
the families themselves. Other states provide that this work shall
be done under certain conditions, and standards are required of the
factory. Massachusetts issues a license to the family to do work in
the home, and like New York, requires a “tenement made” tag attached
to the article; also holding the owners of the property responsible
for any violation of the law. At the Chicago Industrial Exhibition a
picture was shown entitled “Sacred Motherhood.” It was that of a woman
nursing her child and driving a sewing-machine at the same time. It was
a terrible portrayal of unchecked, unregulated industry, which does not
stop to reckon the effect upon the future, but imperils the well-being
of both the mother and the child.
=Labor Disturbances.= The fundamental cause of the troubles in the
clothing industry in Boston prior to the spring of 1913, was similar
to that in the same industry in New York before their abolition by
concerted action of the employers and employees in the spring of the
same year. There have been serious disturbances in the garment trade
in Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities. The
difficulty was right in the trade itself and many of the causes of
discord will continue for some time to come.
Among these causes of disturbances are long hours, low wages, poor
sanitary conditions, sub-contracting, unequal distribution of the
work, work in tenement-houses, failure to state the standard price for
piece-work, playing of favorites in the giving out of the work, lack of
cooperation between the employers and the employees, prevalence of the
piece-work system, and the difficulty of determining what shall be paid
or what constitutes a just basis for computing hours and wages.
For instance, three girls work in one factory and are put upon work
that is to be a test upon which a new wage is to be based. One of the
girls is put to work upon a certain task in shirt-waists. They are made
of thin material; the thread used is very fine and the stuff shirrs
easily, so that it is almost impossible to make any speed. The second
girl is put to work upon a pile of plain waists. The third girl has
a still different task. Each girl at the beginning of the day has an
equal amount of work to do. They all put in the same number of hours
and expend approximately the same amount of energy; but at the end of
the day one of the girls has finished her task, the other has probably
two hours’ work to do on the day following, while the third girl, the
one who was working upon the thin waists, has more than a day’s work
ahead of her. It will be readily seen that it is almost impossible
to determine what pay would be a fair price for making shirt-waists,
or for doing any part of the work connected with the making of these
garments unless a different and more equitable basis of reckoning is
established.
=Cost and Selling Price.= Another matter that enters into the situation
and complicates it is the fact that there is a different selling
price put on each garment. Of course, we must all recognize that
wages cannot be made except in proportion to the selling price of the
garment. No business can be run unless it is able to make enough on
its products to pay a decent wage. The cost of production, including
the cost of materials, a fair price for the superintendent, and a
proportion of the general overhead cost of the factory must be charged
against each garment, together with a proportion of the interest on
the investment and the approximate cost of the wear and tear on the
machinery. Add to this the cost for advertising and marketing the
garment. All of these things have to enter into consideration, and
the wages must be determined by the amount of money that will be
received for the finished garment. Now, how are we to bring about
a just settlement of this vexed question? There is only one way in
which it can be done, that is, by bringing the workers themselves into
partnership with the firm. Just as long as the destiny of the worker is
in the hands of the foreman and there is no chance for these workers to
be heard, or to have any voice in the decisions that are made, so long
there will be fruitful cause for trouble.
=Arbitration.= The experience of the Massachusetts Board of Arbitration
warrants the conclusion that there is a proper and very useful sphere
of activity for a permanent State Board of Arbitration. A number
of questions arise from time to time in almost all trades which do
not require a detailed knowledge of the industry on the part of the
arbitrating body. There are, for example, questions of discharge in
alleged violation of a clause in an agreement covering discharges.
There are certain other controversies which both sides are willing to
have decided by the application of standards which are matters of fact
ascertainable upon investigation. For instance, in many piece-price
controversies, both sides are willing to have the questions decided on
the basis of what competing manufacturers pay for the same operations
under similar working conditions; but each is unwilling to accept the
figures presented by the other side in support of its contention. This
has been done by the Massachusetts Board in the boot and shoe industry,
and recently in a textile case. The Arbitration Board should be given
all the powers in the way of compelling the attendance of witnesses and
testimony under oath, and the production of books and papers, which it
requires to secure the information necessary to reach a decision.
=The Religious and Social Problems.= Twenty-five per cent. of all the
effort put into the processes of industry and commerce is concerned
with the supply of clothing. Most of the clothing is made under
conditions which determine the life and welfare of such a large
proportion of the people that we find in the garment-making industries
themselves a distinct and definite challenge to the religious and
social agencies. There are some fundamental considerations which must
be borne in mind and which will help us to see the problem as it
affects the workers. Most of those in the garment trades are foreigners
unused to our way of thinking. At noon on Fifth Avenue and again at
night as the workers leave for their homes, the newsboys sell papers
printed in Yiddish characters almost exclusively, and only a few
English papers are sold for several blocks below Twenty-third Street.
In religious matters the garment-workers represent three groups: those
who are devoted to the faith of their fathers and who are Jews in
the truest sense of the word; those who have drifted away from the
old faith in the rush of life in America, and, antagonistic to the
domination of the Roman Catholic faith, have not been attracted or won
by the Protestant faith; and a third class composed of those who are
bitterly hostile to all religions because of the corruption of the
church as they view it, because of the social injustice of which they
are the subjects, and which is identified in their own minds with the
church and religious leaders.
It is an interesting thing to visit a social center in either Boston
or New York. Ford Hall or Cooper Union serves as a good illustration.
Here the majority of the people are Jews, radical through and through.
They are intelligently awake and thoroughly skeptical. The Bible is
not an open book to many of these people, and they have not learned to
read history or current events with an open mind. Social conditions
and economic pressure make it almost impossible for them to render
a straight and just judgment. They have monstrous misconceptions of
Protestants and the Protestant religion, for they see for the most part
only the worst side. America means to them, instead of freedom, hope,
and independence, only extortionate profiteering.
=The Gospel for the Garment-workers.= How can we overcome this
prejudice? How can we give these people an adequate and intelligible
interpretation of the gospel? We must respect their faith. It will
not solve the problem to make proselytes of a large number of our new
Jewish citizens. We need to be definite, concrete, and practical, and
to leave controversial matters and philosophical discussions out of
the situation. We need to cultivate more reverence in our American
churches, and a finer regard for the associations and experiences of
the past of these people. As these words are being written, I can see
from my window the tower of a church surmounted by a cross. It is the
Judson Memorial Baptist Church on Washington Square. Sunday after
Sunday there are gathered together large groups of people. Most of them
live under sordid, cramped conditions, but they find in this church a
ministry that appeals to them. The church is more interested in making
good Americans out of these people, and in interpreting America to
them than in securing their membership in the church. And rightly this
church is justified in its attitude. By ministering to the people it is
gaining their allegiance to the principles of Christianity as it could
in no other way.
To sum up the chapter, the making of garments, like other industries we
have considered, is highly specialized. It has been taken out of the
hands of the American group. The old-fashioned dressmaking and tailor
shops have given way to the huge lofts where many factories are turning
out clothing for men, women, boys and girls in large quantities. The
workers are all city dwellers. They are all foreigners, most of them
Jews, with a large intermingling of Italians. To meet their needs and
to interpret the gospel to them the church must first of all come to
know the conditions under which they live. It must create a public
opinion that will demand an adjustment of the difficulties in the trade
itself and then in the homes of the people. In the community in which
they live it must show that the members of the Protestant churches are
the best of friends and neighbors.
CHAPTER V
THE WORLD OF THE MINERS
According to the old Greek story Prometheus stole fire from heaven
and thus drew upon himself the anger of the gods, because with fire
he was able to work miracles and do wonders that rivaled the gods
themselves. The metals of the earth are the instruments in the hands
of man for accomplishing the material wonders that mark our time. Our
age has been rightly termed the steel age, but, as we shall see in
subsequent chapters, this period has its important and unique character
only because man knows how to use fire, and because he has coal at his
command.
=The Riches of the Earth for Man.= It is not surprising that the
ancient Hebrews taught that God made everything for the benefit of the
human race, and that man was the child of his supreme favor, for in
every place over the entire earth are found the things essential to
man’s happiness and comfort. Even in the most desolate regions, with
very few exceptions, a man is able to make his way against adverse
elements. The most valuable minerals are coal, iron, copper, zinc,
lead, gold, and silver. Of course there are many others that are
mined and used extensively. The supply of coal produced for 1916 in
the United States alone was 67,376,364 tons of anthracite coal and
502,518,545 tons of bituminous coal. During the first nine months of
1917 the mines produced 57,778,097 tons of anthracite coal, which is
an increase of 7,847,681 tons over a similar period in 1916, or an
increase of about 16 per cent.
In the United States the absolute necessity for coal was never felt so
keenly as during the winter of 1917-18, when the Fuel Administrator
shut down all the business places for five days and declared workless
Mondays as a measure of relief. The war has demanded extraordinary
measures, and these have been taken with a vigor and decision that have
been really startling. The call for metals made by the warring nations
has been so great that mining is now carried on at a furious rate.
One of the Western mining papers uses as a slogan, “Get the ore while
the prices are high.” The reason that the Germans hold so stubbornly
to northern France is because of the rich coal and iron mines in the
region. For years following the war there will be an extraordinary
demand for an increased output of coal, iron, copper, and zinc, in
fact, for all of the metals. The task of rebuilding the areas will
demand not only ingenuity, but all the resources of all the nations
combined.
[Illustration:
Copyright, Underwood and Underwood.
We forget the men who are toiling underground.]
=The Producers of Coal.= You have no doubt seen the women and children
with their baskets picking up coal along the railroad tracks on the
edge of the city. That small basket of coal will probably be all the
fuel that many of them have. It is a common sight to see the little
foreign boys bringing home packing-boxes and the lids of boxes that
they have begged from the stores to take the place of the coal they
cannot get. Those among us who live in steam-heated apartments, or in
communities near the coal-fields or wooded areas, do not realize what
a constant struggle is required on the part of the poor people in
the cities to keep coal enough in the stove to prevent the family from
freezing. “The only times I was really warm enough last winter,” said
a Slovenian woman in Chicago, “was when I went to church, and then I
had to keep my head muffled up.” It was said of a group of Italians in
Boston, “The men go to the saloon, the women to the church, both for
the same purpose,--to get good and warm.”
Just as we sometimes fail to realize how many people are working for us
to make our clothes or to produce our food, so we forget the men who
are toiling underground to dig the coal and mine the iron upon which we
are so dependent for our every-day living. The city dweller especially
is dependent upon the supply of coal that comes to him through retail
sources, but in order to bring that coal to the city there has been
a long line of workers, each one putting his hand to the task of
producing the necessity.
=Where the Coal Is Mined.= If you should visit the coal-mining
community, you would first of all be impressed with the desolation
of the place. The village is an ugly, straggling affair with nothing
to add to its beauty or hide its deformities. Nearly all the houses
are built alike, two and three rooms being the average size. In all
probability not one painted house is to be found in the whole town,
unless possibly it is the front of a saloon on the main street. In many
of the old-time mining communities the fronts of the saloons were all
painted blue. Whether or not this was done to match the color of the
patrons’ noses, no one seems to know. The fences are of rough pickets
and so broken and out of repair that, as one person visiting the coal
town for the first time said, “The pickets look like broken teeth in
an old, dried-up skull.” There are very few flowers or gardens, and the
deep black mud of the winter-time, the black smoke, and the dust of the
dry season during the summer deepen the sense of desolation one feels
in the midst of these villages. The schoolhouse is a poor one-room
affair; and if there is a church, it has a weak organization and is
housed in a building that is little if any better than the average in
the community. Very few coal-mining towns in Colorado have a church of
any kind. The Home Missions Council looked into this matter some years
ago and reported extensively its investigations.
The Cœur d’Alene mining district of northern Idaho is rich in ores,
but poor in cultural and religious opportunities for the people. In a
region lying along the north fork of the Cœur d’Alene river there are
half a dozen small towns where there is not a church, and it is rarely
that a minister visits the region.
=The Mining Areas.= Never before have the common necessities of life
seemed so important as they do now. Canada produces large quantities of
minerals, the chief of which is copper. The production for 1916 of all
the minerals was valued at $177,417,574. The coal and principal metals
produced in Canada, with their respective amounts for the year named,
are as follows:
Copper 119,770,814 tons
Nickel 82,958,564 ”
Lead 41,593,680 ”
Zinc 23,315,030 ”
Silver 25,669,172 ”
Coal 14,461,678 ”
To transport this amount of coal (the smallest tonnage of all) there
would be required 482,056 freight-cars. This would make a train almost
4,000 miles long, a distance greater than from Nova Scotia to British
Columbia.
The mining areas in the United States are fairly well defined.
Practically all of the anthracite coal comes from central and
northern Pennsylvania, only a little being mined in Colorado. The
largest bituminous coal-fields are found in Virginia, Illinois, Ohio,
Tennessee, southeastern Kansas, southwestern Missouri, Colorado,
Alabama, and some in the west-central part of Pennsylvania. Iron is
mined in the northeastern part of Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin,
upper peninsula of Michigan, Tennessee, Georgia, western Pennsylvania,
and in southeastern Kansas. The copper regions are in the upper
peninsula of Michigan, Arizona, and northern Idaho. The chief lead
district is the Joplin district of southwestern Missouri. This region
is matched in large measure by the Cœur d’Alene of northern Idaho. Lead
and zinc are almost always found together. Gold and silver are mined on
the Pacific Coast, and in Colorado, and northern Idaho. Some gold is
found in all of the Rocky Mountain states and small amounts in Georgia.
There is scarcely a state in the Union but what produces to a greater
or less amount all of the metals that go to make up the mineral wealth
of the United States.
=The Miners of King Coal.= Coal is mined in three ways: by sinking a
shaft and then running tunnels out from it following the vein of the
coal; by driving a tunnel straight into the heart of the mountain; or
by scooping it up with a steam shovel and loading it into cars. The
first two methods are used in all the mines of Colorado; the latter
method is used in the mines in southeastern Kansas and southwestern
Missouri. In a mine where the shaft is sunk the hoist is directly over
the mouth of the pit. The cages are just like elevators and drop to
the bottom of the pit; there the loaded cars are pushed upon them and
at a signal the car is brought to the top of the superstructure above
the mine known as the tipple. The car is unloaded automatically and
runs back upon the cage, and is lowered into the mine as the second car
is brought up to the surface very rapidly. At the bottom of the mine
and following it out along the vein of coal there are little railway
tracks. The cars on these tracks are pulled by mules. Some mines have
electric cars, but the mule is still the motive power in general use.
These mules are sentenced to the mines for life. Stables are made for
them by digging a cave in one side of the main shaft or tunnel, and
here in the underground mine the mule lives, moves, and has his being.
Sometimes the animals are brought to the surface and turned out to
pasture. It is really pathetic to see with what joy they accept the
light, air, and freedom of God’s good world above ground.
The only light in most of the mines is that given off from the little
lamps carried on the caps of the miners. It is a weird sight to
walk through a mine and see the bobbing lights; to catch the sound
of pick and shovel in the tunnels that cross and recross each other
at intervals; to hear the creak of the wheels, the slamming of the
doors; and to see the mules as they strain at their task like phantom
engines hauling the loaded cars of coal. When the men go to work in
the morning, they are checked in and let down in the cage; when they
come up they are checked out. In the morning when they check in they
are white; at night they are black. Thus the color line is completely
eliminated by working in a mine. The work is done in little rooms or
pockets. Each miner has to work out his own room. He drills the hole,
puts in the charge of powder; and when he has everything in readiness,
fires the charge that brings down the coal; then he and his partner
(for two men work together, one is called the miner, the other is known
as the buddy) shovel the coal into the cars, and push them out into the
main line of the mine tramway track. The miner and his buddy may be
both white men, or the miner may be a white man and the buddy a Negro.
They look alike as they work in the semi-darkness and the common tasks
eventually make them appreciate each other for what they are and what
they do.
The miner has to follow the vein. He must put in the braces to protect
himself against the falling roof, must remove all the stone and slate,
and mine only clean coal. This he shovels into his car. It is weighed
and tagged, tally is kept, and at the end of the day he is credited
with so many tons and is paid accordingly. When the vein is thick and
the miner can stand upright, his work is hard and monotonous enough;
but when the vein is thin, it is necessary for him to stoop or to
lie down in order to get the coal. This makes the work hard almost
beyond human endurance. It is no wonder that mining greatly affects
the character of the men involved in it. No one can spend eight or ten
hours underground every day doing that kind of work without having the
place and the work stamp itself upon his mind and his character. Life
underground spoils even the temper of a mule!
=Accidents.= Mining develops the spirit of adventure. There is always
a risk. Mining is a dangerous operation and is classified as extra
hazardous. There is continual danger from falling stones, and the miner
is always gambling with fate. A study of the coroner’s report in any
country where mining is carried on supplies concrete evidence that a
large number of men are killed in the mines from one cause and another.
There is the danger from the deadly carbon-monoxide gas and another
danger from the explosion of the coal-dust. As the coal is mined a
certain proportion of it is ground into powder, and this fills the air
and becomes a powerful explosive. Precautions are taken in most cases.
The mines are sprinkled and state and national governments have done
much to make mining safe, but at the best the occupation claims an
unusually heavy toll in life and limb.
According to statistics regarding deaths of miners during the years
1907 to 1912, it is shown that 23.2 out of every hundred died from
accidents; and among the metalliferous miners 24.7 per cent. of all
deaths were caused by accidents. A great many industrial accidents are
due to failure on the part of the management to make proper provision
against accident, and to keep abreast with the increase in efficiency
of the machinery and output in the matter of precautionary measures.
Also it is now known that industrial accidents are caused by excessive
fatigue, carelessness, and ignorance on the part of the workers
themselves. Taking all of these things into consideration, however, we
must realize that a large proportion of the accidents and fatalities
in the coal-mines are inherent in the business itself.
=Returns for Labor Received by the Miners.= Coal has to be dug where
nature put it. Therefore, the mining village is almost certain to be
located in a desolate region, and thus the miner and his family will be
denied many of the good things that other people enjoy, because of the
conditions under which they are compelled to live. We hear a great deal
about the enormously large wages paid to the miner. Unfortunately this
condition is not true; for the stories we hear of the big wages the
miners receive are very largely fictitious. In the Colorado mines it is
shown by actual study of the statistics taken at the time of the last
great strike in 1914, that the average wage for the miner when actually
employed was $4.58 a day; but other figures given at the same period
show that other miners were paid an average wage of only $2.61 a day.
It is impossible to get at the facts as to wages.
The miner is forced to buy his powder, oil, pay doctor’s fee,
blacksmithing charges, union dues, and other expenses. These are
deducted, so that the wage is reduced to the point where perhaps
not more than one per cent. of the entire number of workers receive
as much as $25 a week. In fact, the wage is so small compared to
the difficulties of the work and the hardships of living, that the
miner finds it almost impossible to move freely in order to better
his condition. The result of this situation has been that, whereas
formerly nearly all the miners were English-speaking men, they are now
practically all non-English-speaking immigrants. In the camp at Ludlow,
where the miners lived after they and their families were driven
out of their homes in Colorado during the strike of 1914, there were
twenty-two nationalities, and they were living together in some sort of
amity.
=Workers in the Metal Mines.= The workers in the metal mines have a
problem different from that of the workers in the coal-mines. The
copper country of Michigan located on Lake Superior in the upper
peninsula is the most famous metal-producing region of the United
States. These mines have been operated for half a century; and for the
most part a humane policy has been followed and, consequently, the
cities and towns in the region have developed some civic pride, and
have an unusually high reputation for orderliness and morality. There
are very few of the bad features which one is accustomed to find in
such communities. The district has approximately forty-two mines and
the products from these mines amount to fifty million dollars a year.
The shafts of these copper mines are the deepest holes that have ever
been dug in the earth as far as we know. The “Red Jacket” mine is
almost a mile and a quarter deep. The shaft of a copper mine is pierced
every one hundred feet by levels or tunnels. The trams run in these
levels to the chambers where the rock is cut and are known as stopes.
Drills are operated by compressed air; the miner bores the holes,
places the dynamite charge in readiness, and touches off the charge as
he leaves his work at the end of the shift. The broken rock is picked
up during the next shift, loaded into the tram-cars by the trammer, and
then dumped into the skip or little car by means of which it is raised
to the surface.
[Illustration:
Press Illustrating Service.
The new U. S. Bureau of Mines Rescue Car is manned by a mining
engineer, a mine surgeon, a foreman miner, a first aid miner, and a
clerk.]
In the Cœur d’Alene field the process of mining in the lead and
zinc mines is very much the same as that in the copper mines of
Michigan. The Cœur d’Alene region of northern Idaho is a district in
itself. It might almost be called a province, it is so extensive. The
drills that are used by the miners are protected in some cases by a
stream of water which pours off the end of its point as it comes in
contact with the rock. This prevents the dust from flying and being
breathed by the worker. These drills are just now being introduced. The
old-fashioned drill had no such protection and is called by the miner
the widow-maker, because of the gruesome effect on the worker.
=Wages.= The wages in the Calumet district as well as in the Cœur
d’Alene section are not, and never have been, adequate to the needs of
the men, nor are they proportionate to the returns received from the
work that these men have been doing. Wages must be considered on the
basis of comparative value. The type of the worker, however, and the
risks incurred, and the opportunity for improving the worker himself
must all be taken into account. When we remember the enormous profits
made on the metals, especially within the last few years, we will find
that the increase in the wages of the men has not been enough to meet
the increased cost of living. Wages have advanced about 20 per cent.
and living expenses 140 per cent. Some welfare work is being undertaken
in almost all of the mining communities. But welfare work cannot
supplement poor wages, nor does it do away with the feeling of unrest
always present in the community and which threatens to break out in
rebellion and throw the whole district into disorder.
=The Church and the Miner.= The pastor of the miners’ church told the
story of the desolation in the life of his people. He said: “There
are no chances for cultural work. When I talk about the higher life
the people listen to me as if I were giving a lecture on Mars. It is
something that is more or less interesting because I am able to make
it interesting, but there is no special personal interest in it. All
of my people live in this desolate and isolated village. There is
nothing attractive anywhere around. The superintendent and a few of the
English-speaking workers live five miles away in a place that calls
itself a city. There are five other villages like mine; no one from the
other places ever comes here except on business. Every Saturday night
most of the men go to the ‘city.’ On Saturday, or pay-day evening, the
stores, amusement places, saloons, and the principal streets of that
center are filled with a heterogeneous mass of people of all races and
there is a regular babel of tongues. The destroying forces work havoc
with my people. Now what can I do to meet the conditions?” Listening
to him I wondered and went away still wondering. In these places where
men are working to produce the coal for us, and the metals that form
the foundation-stone of our civilization, there must be something more
than merely the touch of charity; there must be worked out a plan by
which true brotherhood may become a reality. We are accepting the
gift of these men, the things that they produce at such risk, and we
are forgetting the men themselves. They are serving our interests and
we have a responsibility for them, but what are we doing to meet the
situation?
At the close of the Colorado coal strike a plan was inaugurated for
bettering conditions throughout the state. This plan has much to
commend it to the public favor. It is not wholly democratic and it has
many features that can be criticized. Even viewed in the best light it
fails to solve the fundamental difficulties in the situation--but it is
a long step ahead of anything that has ever been done before. One of
the miners, while discussing the plan, said: “It is all right as far as
it goes. The best thing about it is that the company promises to allow
us to join our union. When we get the district organized 100 per cent.
we will put some real democracy into the plan.”
The features of the plan may be stated broadly in these four
propositions:
First of all, the men working the mines are to be recognized as
partners in the enterprise and are to have a voice in the management
of the mines. They elect their representatives who meet with the
representatives of the company and together they work out their own
problems.
Second, the bad conditions which are chronic in the mines and which
have disturbed the peace are to be corrected as far as possible.
Third, the physical conditions in the village are to be improved.
Better houses are to be built and they are to be painted. Provisions
are made so that the miners can have gardens.
Fourth, special arrangements are made for the establishment of better
schools, Young Men’s Christian Association with club privileges,
and help is given in organizing and maintaining churches and other
religious agencies.
All of these things point to a better day that is coming, and is a
great advance over the attitude taken by the old-time mine owner who
replied to a committee which warned him of impending trouble, “Let them
start something if they want to find out who is boss.”
The battle has not been won, and will not be won, until the church
makes a demand for industrial justice its chief object, and makes
democracy really applicable in every mining district and community
throughout the whole nation.
CHAPTER VI
THE WORLD OF THE STEEL WORKERS
“The sky-line of your cities is the monument of your civilization.”
These words summed up the impression of an Oriental visiting America
for the first time. He had seen everything of America that could be
shown during his two months’ visit. Boards of trades in the various
cities entertained him. Figures concerning miles of pavements, hundreds
of miles of trolley lines, millions of dollars in the various banks,
thousands of bales of cotton, millions of tons of coal, iron, steel,
potatoes, rice, wheat, corn, and all the rest of the things that go to
make America great had been quoted to him. He was apparently impressed
by what he saw but did not become enthusiastic, and accepted every
statement with becoming politeness. No one could tell what moved
him most. When he summed up his total impressions and expressed his
opinion, it showed that he had really formed a most exact judgment of
that which makes the true material basis of our national life. The
skyscraper building is the only important contribution that America has
made to the art of architecture. This structural development, which is
so truly American, has been made possible only because we have learned
how to use steel for the framework of the gigantic construction.
=The Steel Industry.= Interesting statistics as to the extent of
the steel industry have been compiled. The United States and Canada
together produce about half of the world’s output. According to the
last figures, there are employed in the iron and steel industry of this
country 1,426,014 workers. At the present time the capacity of all the
shops is taxed to the utmost and hundreds of new factories have been
erected. Canada and the United States are cooperating in the production
of ships. The huge bridge works are giving over all of their machinery
and time to the building of new boats to carry men and food in support
of the Allied armies in France.
=The Use of Steel.= Steel is made by melting iron and combining it with
a certain proportion of carbon. The softest grade of steel contains
less than one per cent. of carbon, the hardest contains about thirty
per cent. Iron furnishes almost every useful thing that is necessary to
our life in the community. When we have food and clothes, we are then
ready to take up the routine of living a part of the common life of our
city or town. Iron is used extensively in building our homes. The house
is held together with nails made of iron; its plumbing, its lighting,
its heating are all made possible by the use of steel.
Possibly the building in which we work is a steel building, if not,
it may be made of reenforced concrete and this form of construction
is dependent upon the use of iron. The product toward which we are
contributing our industry, whatever it may be, is dependent upon
commerce, transportation, and communication; and these great branches
of activity are dependent upon steel. Iron can be melted and cast
into a thousand different shapes. It is used to make the most simple
kitchen utensil and the largest and most complicated machinery. Again,
it is melted in larger quantity, combined with carbon, and put through
the rolling-mills. By this process it may become steel rails, or be
made into plates and huge sheets that form the protective outer skin of
the great ships of war. It is rolled out thin and corrugated to be used
as sheeting for houses, and sides of freight-cars, and roofs of houses;
or it may issue in things as delicate as knitting-needles or the finest
springs which form the adjustment and motive power in the most costly
watches. It is used in the construction of buildings that tower up
hundreds of feet above the level of the street, and is the only thing
that has been found so far that can be used successfully for such a
purpose. At the same time this most necessary substance is formed into
pliable rope and used to draw the miner and the minerals he mines from
the depths of the earth, and to keep the elevators running up and down
in hotels, office buildings, and apartment houses. The finest cambric
needles are first cousins to the great guns with which the Germans were
able to shell Paris from a distance of seventy-five miles.
The advance in recent years in invention and new processes as applied
to the manufacture of steel has brought about more changes in the
industrial life of the world than any other thing. The cities of the
future will all be steel cities. We have already built our cities
twice--once of wood and once of brick--and we are now building them
of steel. An advertisement in a hotel in a Middle-Western city reads:
“This hotel is built without a stick of wood. We could roast an ox in
the room next to yours and never disturb you.” Steel mesh is replacing
lath in ceilings, and ornamental steel ceilings are replacing plaster.
In subway systems quantities of steel have been used for tunnels; the
elevated railroads are prolonged bridges. Williamsburg Bridge between
New York and Brooklyn cost $20,000,000, and 45,000 tons of steel were
used in its construction. One pound in every ten of all the steel
manufactured is made into wire. The Brooklyn Bridge cables have each
6,400 strands of wire. Other wires made of steel have approximately
a dimension of one tenth the thickness of a hair. A carpet tack is
an insignificant sort of thing, but one factory in Chicago produced
3,000,000 pounds of these tacks in a year. Steel goes into furniture,
is made into barrels; utilized in art work, so that the value of common
iron when refined and drawn out to the highest possible utility makes
steel the most precious of all metals to-day. Watch-screws cost $1,600
a pound and hair springs twice this amount.
[Illustration:
McGraw-Hill Company.
Commerce and transportation are dependent upon steel, and to-day there
are employed in the iron and steel industry of this country, 1,426,014
workers.]
=The Making of Steel.= The workshop of civilization is now on the west
side of the Atlantic because of the vast manufacturing establishments
producing steel on this side of the ocean. The so-called Bessemer
process in making steel has brought about a change that is almost
as revolutionary in its far-reaching results as any of the great
revolutions in the past. Within thirty years American resources have
been developed, and American methods have been reorganized with such
amazing rapidity that the United States has to-day, together with
the natural advantage, the means at hand for utilizing its almost
inexhaustible supplies of fuel and iron. The world needs these supplies
and America is glad that she is able to do her part in supplying
them.
Steel has been made for centuries, but until a few years ago, the
process was slow and costly, and the tools with which the men worked
were really treasures. In those days a pocket-knife was a thing of
great value. The railroads used iron rails but these soon wore out. If
it had been suggested that steel be used a protest would have been made
on the grounds that steel is too expensive. Trains had to be shortened;
coaches and locomotives built of light material because iron rails and
bridges could not stand the strain. As land in the cities became more
valuable and taller buildings were needed, stone and brick not proving
adaptable and too expensive, the Bessemer process, which manufactured
steel cheaply and in great quantities, came to meet a long-felt need.
Iron was plentiful but the process of converting it into steel had not
been mastered. The great difficulty in manufacturing steel is to get
just the right proportion of carbon mixed with the iron. The Bessemer
system takes all the carbon out and then puts back into it the quantity
that is needed. Tons of molten iron are run into an immense pear-shaped
vessel called a converter. Blasts of air are forced in from below.
These unite with the carbon and the impurities such as sulphur and
silicon are destroyed. There is a roar and clatter and a terrific din.
A great bolt of red flame shoots forth many feet from the mouth of the
converter. Its color changes from red to yellow and then to white. When
the flame becomes white the workers know that the carbon and other
impurities are all gone; and this is the signal for the blast of air
to be turned off. Then a quantity of special iron ore in melted form,
containing the right amount of carbon to convert the whole into steel
of the desired degree of hardness, is poured into the purified molten
iron in the converter. This huge converter is perfectly poised upon
pivots so that it can be moved with very little effort. The molten
steel at the next stage is poured from the converter into square molds
and the blocks resulting from it are called blooms. These are then
started through the mill, passed under and between rollers of different
shapes and kinds, and drawn out into plates, rails, or beams.
=The Steel Factory or Rolling-mill.= One of the foremost pictures
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a picture of a
steel-mill. It seems to be a prosaic subject but it makes an appealing
picture, and one typical of our modern world. Some one has described
a steel-mill as a modern materialization of Dante’s Inferno. The sky
above Pittsburgh, Birmingham, and other steel centers is aflame at
night as the process of manufacturing is carried on in the miles of
buildings that contain the workers and the machinery. To step into one
of these steel factories even in broad daylight is to step out of the
world of reality into the semi-reality of a new and unknown world.
Most of the men work stripped to the waist. The long ribbons of red
hot steel writhe and twist about the length of the room. The jangle of
chains mingles with the creaking of the machinery above our heads. The
sparks are flying and a bluish haze hovers about the heads of the men
like some unholy halo as they move back and forth appearing as gnomes
in the unnatural light of the place. There is a peculiar odor that we
instinctively associate with the blacksmith shop that used to stand at
the side of the street on the way between our house and the butcher
shop where we used to be sent every day for the meat for dinner.
Everything moves with feverish haste. No one lags. Every man knows his
task and does it. He must keep up.
The days are unusually long in the steel-mills. It used to be that
the men worked twelve hours a day and seven days a week. This has
been changed now in most of the mills, but even yet there is a great
deal of twelve-hour work and a great deal of Sunday labor. The rumble
of the cranes above the heads of the gnome-like men at work in the
building fills our ears with an unearthly sound. The peculiar glare of
the gigantic open hearth changes at frequent intervals as the white
cascade of molten metal announces the beginning of the shaping process
of the new rail or the new plate for some new man-of-war, or the beam
that is to live for centuries in some skyscraper. These men working in
this mill are kneading the metal into shape, for as it goes under the
rollers it is pressed and twisted until the final process is completed.
=Accidents.= If it was a lucky day when we visited the steel-mill there
were no serious accidents. Men are being continually hurt in the works.
A report concerning one says: “John Schwobboda and Joseph Mikelliffyky
were standing near one of the hearths. Something went wrong, and
instead of the steel coming out in an orderly stream it broke out and
before these two could get away they were caught in the midst of the
stream and absorbed by the burning metal.” This thing has happened many
times. The percentage of deaths due to accidents and injuries during
the last ten years among soldiers and sailors of the United States has
been about twelve to the thousand; in the same period with the workers
in the steel-mills it has been about sixteen to the thousand.
=Wages and Conditions of Labor.= The toil is strenuous and the hazards
great; the hours are long and the product is of almost incalculable
value. What do men get out of it? They are the servants of civilization
and without them we would have no such trade as we have to-day, we
would have no commerce and no progress. Steel is king. When the price
of steel is up to normal, times are good; when the price of steel is
down, times are bad. A Pittsburgh man said that steel is the elevator
which carries civilization, “The world goes up or goes down with the
price of steel rails.” The workers are the subjects and the slaves of
this king. They are giving their lives as well as their time in fealty
to him. Yet how little the average person knows of the lives of these
men.
A genius for mathematics has estimated that if the 587 rolling-mills
in the United States were set end to end in a circle around Pittsburgh
it would be 100 miles in diameter. Inside of this circle can be formed
another circle three quarters as large if we set end to end the 532
smaller steel-mills and 3,161 puddling furnaces, where the iron is
first melted and made into bars called pigs. There are 577 open-hearth
works, or factories that manufacture steel by another process much
slower than the Bessemer, but having certain advantages because the
process does not have to be carried on so rapidly. These works would
make a third circle 50 miles across. The 410 other furnaces of various
kinds would form a fourth circle 35 miles in diameter. If all the
Bessemer converters were made into one great big converter and put in
the center, it would be a mile in circumference and would pour a river
of molten steel every hour.
The furnaces are fed literally mountains of ore every year. The
families dependent upon the iron and steel trade for their living, if
gathered together, would form a state more populous than Illinois. The
steel business thinks its own thoughts, prints its own literature, and
very largely makes its own laws. There is no trade on the face of the
earth equal to it. The results of the present world war hang in the
balance. The needs come back definitely to the steel industry. If we
can get more workers we can get more steel. If we get more steel, we
can build more ships, and if we can get more ships, we can get more
soldiers, more ammunition, and more food with which to fight the war
for democracy.
The year 1916 was the most prosperous one which the American steel
trade has ever known; manufacturers especially were driven to the limit
of their capacity. The purchases amounted to startling proportions.
Wages were increased so that the workman shared in a measure in the
general prosperity. Three advances were made, each time approximating
10 per cent. The workmen are paid on a sliding schedule thus benefiting
by the rise in the value of the product they make. Never have workmen
received such wages as are now being paid to the workmen of America.
But over against this increase in wages must be considered the increase
in the cost of living, and also the base line, or average wage in days
before the war upon which these increases are figured. Hours are still
very long and no process has been devised for making the work very much
easier or less wearing upon the individual worker. Investigators who
made their report in 1912 said that during the year 1910, the period
covered by their investigation, 29 per cent. of the employees in the
blast furnaces and steel works and rolling-mills ordinarily worked
seven days a week; 24 per cent. worked eighty-four hours or more a
week. This means a twelve-hour day seven days a week.
These long hours were not confined to the men in the blast-furnace
department, where there is a real necessity for continual toil, but
to a large extent to the other departments, where no such necessity
existed, except the necessity of making all the profits possible
from the workers. When the shift was made from day to night work or
from night to day work, the employees making the shift were required
to remain on duty without relief for periods of from eighteen to
twenty-four hours consecutively. No one can visit a steel-mill and not
feel that there is something merciless in the way the workers are being
goaded by invisible forces to keep their speed at the topmost notch.
The very nature of the work is such that men are forced to labor at
high tension. The mill stops for nothing either day or night. “You must
draw or be dragged to death,” said one of the workers.
A steel employee in South Chicago made good wages but was a hard
drinker and with his companions spent most of the evenings in the
saloons so that there was rarely a night that he went to bed sober. A
friend of the family had a chance to talk with him about the situation
and tried to argue with him to show him the folly of drinking. His
reply was, “Why, who cares? The mill drives me all the day long and
dries me all up. I have to draw, draw, draw, or be dragged. By the end
of the day there is only one thing that I want and that is beer.”
A large proportion of the workers in the steel-mills are immigrants.
There are Magyars, Poles, Slovaks, Croatians, Italians, as well as
Austro-Hungarians, and all the other races mixed in. Many of the men
are single, or if they are married they have left their wives in the
old country. The wage is very largely based on the needs of a single
man. Nearly all the families take boarders. This reduces the cost of
living and in some of these families, the “boarding boss” as he is
known, is the head of the household consisting of himself, his wife,
his children, and anywhere from four to sixteen boarders or lodgers.
Each lodger pays the boarding boss a fixed sum, usually two or three
dollars a month for lodging, cooking, and washing. The food is bought
by the boss and its cost shared individually by the members of the
group. A study was made of a community in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and
it was found that the food consumed was cheap beef, bread, and coffee.
Some of the people used vegetables sparingly. The Italians ate only
a small quantity of meat, but used large quantities of vegetables,
spaghetti, bread, and olive oil. The Austro-Hungarians used vast
quantities of meat.
=Houses and Homes.= The housing conditions among the poorly paid steel
workers are invariably bad. In a part of Pittsburgh known as the
“strip” the living conditions are bad almost beyond belief. The reason
given for this situation is that the wages are so low no better is
possible. The standard of living among all the steel workers is low.
Comfort or ordinary provisions for decency are almost entirely lacking
in nearly every steel-producing district. The housing conditions are
congested, the children play in the streets, and only the cheapest
and most dangerous forms of recreation are open to the young people.
A large proportion of the workers are members of the Roman Catholic
Church. The men, however, for the most part have no use for the church
and rarely if ever attend. The women cling to it, since they are
naturally more devout.
The children suffer from the hard circumstances in the laboring
communities. The mothers have generally gone to work too early in life
to give proper vitality to the child. The lack of conditions that
make for decent home life brought about through inadequate incomes of
the fathers and the overcrowded housing conditions taxes life heavily
by infant mortality, and mortgages the future health and morals of
the children, thus threatening the future efficiency of the state.
Investigations conducted by the Children’s Bureau in Washington show
that the chances of life for a baby grow appallingly small as the
father’s earnings grow less. For instance, the cases of one thousand
babies in eight representative cities were studied. The returns show
that in families where the father earns less than $550 a year every
sixth baby dies; while in families where the father’s income is $1,050
or more a year only one baby in sixteen dies.[2]
[2] See “Infant Mortality,” a pamphlet issued by the Children’s
Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.
[Illustration: The church in this age of steel must preach from the
text, which interpreted in modern times will be, “A man is more
precious than a bar of steel.”]
=The Church and the Homes of the Workers.= The disorganizing influence
on the social and industrial life incident to the war accentuates the
importance of protecting mothers and children. The churches have a
remarkable opportunity here, for it is to the homes that the church
makes its first and strongest appeal. Jesus set a little child at the
very center of his system for regenerating humanity and saving the
world.
The church must produce and train skilled leaders who can direct
affairs; it must set in motion forces that will counteract the evil in
these industrial communities; and must help to create public sentiment
so that the city that allows bad housing to exist and the industry
that forces it will be looked upon as murderers of little children.
Playgrounds, recreation centers, and the strict enforcement of all the
laws that protect the home must be urged upon the church as a part of
its program. Without these the gospel fails.
=The Church and the Workers.= Another feature incident to the life in
the steel-mills is the apathy that develops in the workers themselves.
Their attitude toward life is characterized by a dumb, brutish
fatalism. The editor of a paper in one of the steel cities when
discussing this attitude of mind remarked: “A Finlander cares less
about being killed in the mill than I do about having my tooth pulled.”
It is almost impossible to enforce the necessary precautions. Life
becomes of little value to the worker pressed as he is for production.
This thing called steel looms big and human; life looks small in
proportion. Jesus, appealing to the rural-minded people of his day,
said that man is more precious than a sheep. The church in our great
steel centers must often and persistently preach the gospel from this
text which interpreted in modern times will be, “Man is more precious
than a bar of steel.”
=Progress Toward Justice.= The process of adjustment between
manufacturing, the cost of labor, and the selling price of the
material is a difficult one. Labor conditions have been such, and
competition so keen, that it has been very difficult to safeguard
the men employed in this industry. Union labor has had a hard time
to establish itself. Nearly all of the mills and factories are run
as open shops. Of late years, however, it has been found that there
must be closer cooperation between the management, the owners, and the
workers; and certain concessions have been made and new elements have
been introduced into the system which are bettering conditions. It is
now possible for the workers to have shares of the common stock of the
United States Steel Corporation. The workers are suspicious of this
scheme as well as of all other forms of profit-sharing and welfare work
because they believe that it leads to a deepening of the dependence of
the worker upon the concern for which he works, and thus hinders the
coming of industrial democracy. It must be said, however, for a plan
which makes it possible for the employees to buy stock in the concern,
that it is a step toward democracy if it is democratically carried out.
The difficulty at present is that only the better paid, higher class
of laborers in the steel-mills can or will take the stock. Until the
wages of all the laborers are increased to the place where each one
can have a decent home located in a desirable part of the city, and a
degree of leisure so that he can give some time and attention to other
things than the mere process of making steel, the distributing of stock
will not go far toward settling the labor difficulties that so often
embarrass the great steel companies.
=A Successful Experiment.= Democracy means that each worker shall
have a voice and a vote in determining the conditions under which he
works as well as some share in the ownership of the business. The only
answer to the argument against democracy is a successful experiment in
democracy. A manufacturing plant in a democratic country must recognize
in these days that the only scheme that will succeed must make for
a larger control of the business by a larger number of the people
employed. The Baker Manufacturing Company, of Evansville, Wisconsin,
has carried out a stock-owning, profit-sharing plan with great success.
Since 1899 the lowest additional wage paid to the employees has been 60
per cent. and the highest 120 per cent. based on average wages. Every
employee has a vote in the company, and the annual meetings are held
in the town hall. The stock issued each year represents real value,
for every dollar of it is put into material improvements in the shop
and its equipment. I visited Mr. Baker some years ago and he told me
of the success of his plans. Just before I left I said: “Mr. Baker,
do you think that you have been wise in putting so much effort into
the creation of this new form of industrial organization?” He replied:
“Well, I am past seventy years of age and have all the money I can use
conveniently. I enjoy life and have the friendship of my workmen. I do
not need to station detectives about my home to protect me while I am
asleep; and another thing, we never have had a strike in this town. We
are all friends and fellow workers.” Surely these are the things that
accumulations of money cannot produce and their possession is beyond
value. What has been done in this factory connected with the steel
trade ought to be possible everywhere.
=The Church and Its Approach.= The scheme of adjustment is a difficult
one, and the church is not meeting the situation in any adequate way.
Its task is before it and must be attacked with persistence, with
skill, and with patience. This means, first of all, that the church
in the communities where the steel workers live must find a method of
approach through the home and the school to the heart and the life of
the people. Until this is done, it will be futile for the church to
even attempt to minister to the people in the deeper things of life.
CHAPTER VII
THE WORLD OF THE TRANSPORTATION MEN
“Here, boss, jes’ take fo’ dollars’ worth of ride out of this here
bill.” This was the response of an old Negro riding on a Southern
train when asked for his ticket by the conductor. Without a word the
conductor gave him the change from a ten dollar bill and a ticket to
tuck into his hat and which allowed him to ride to a town approximately
two hundred miles distant. When the train reached its destination
the old Negro began to fumble in his pockets and then he picked up
his bundles and slowly got off. Three hours later, as a train coming
in the opposite direction stopped at the station, the same Negro got
aboard, paid his fare back to the starting-point and arrived early in
the morning. Going up the street he met the judge of the district, who
said to him, “Hello, John, what are you doing out so early? Where have
you been?” “I ain’t been nowhere, Judge; I jes’ been doing a little
traveling.” This is not an isolated case by any means. I told this
story as I had heard it to a conductor on another road and he said it
was a very common thing to have fifteen or twenty white people as well
as Negroes “ride out” the mileage covered by a five dollar bill.
The American is the most restless person in the world. We are always on
the move and a large amount of our traveling is purposeless. We simply
travel because we like to be going somewhere. This trait in us is a
survival from a long past age in man’s development. This primitive love
of change is strengthened by the economic pressure under which most of
us live. Early man wandered from place to place in search of his food.
Modern man does the same, the only difference being that he does not
now look for his food ready to his hand, but looks for a place to work,
so that he can earn money with which to buy his food. “We have been
married twelve years,” said a vivacious little lady, “and I have lived
in six states. It seems that my husband is always getting a chance to
better our condition, and we both have come to look forward to a move
about every two years. If we just live long enough, we will have lived
in every state in the Union.”
But transportation as we understand it to-day refers to the moving
of freight, express, and mail, as well as to the moving of men and
women. Man himself was the original burden-bearer and became the first
transportation system, carrying combined freight and express. He simply
took his bundle on his shoulders and used his legs as the means of
moving from one place to another. Then he used other men to help carry
his loads. There has been much speculation as to how the stones used in
the building of the Great Pyramids were brought to the desert and put
into place. Many theories have been advanced. One of the latest is that
the Pyramids are made of concrete and that they were poured rather than
quarried. However the material was secured, or in whatever way the work
was accomplished, we can be sure of one thing and that is that all of
the material was carried by men. They were the slaves of Pharaoh and
this was the usual form of the transportation system of Egypt. There
were auxiliary lines which employed camels, asses, and some horses; but
the slave was the principal carrier just as he is in Africa to-day. The
rivers and the oceans were used as highways of travel, but the boats
were very crude affairs and the slaves chained to the seats and pulling
on heavy oars formed the motive power. The oars were made in graduated
lengths, one bank above another. The three-tiered Roman boat was known
as the trireme and it was the great-grandfather of the ocean liners
with their triple screws. It is a long development from the primitive
methods of travel and burden-bearing in the early days of Egypt to the
great transcontinental railway lines and the ocean steamships of our
day!
=Progress and Transportation.= The word progress carries within it the
implication that there is a road over which the race of men is passing.
The roadmaker has always been the pioneer of civilization. The advent
of steam and the perfecting of railroads marks a period of development
throughout civilization itself. Some one has said that it would be
far more interesting and informing concerning the facts that will
transpire in the next one hundred years, if we could see the railroad
map showing all the transportation lines in the different continents to
be published in the year 2018, than if we could have a map that would
simply show the national boundaries. A nation may be compared to a
human body. The railroad lines are the arteries along which flows the
life-blood of the nation. Industry is the center of a nation’s life,
and it pumps commerce over the rails and thus keeps the body growing
and in a healthful state.
=Age of the Engineer.= The great world war has been characterized in
many ways, but perhaps the best characterization of all is that it
is an engineers’ war. Eliminate the work of the engineers, civil and
mechanical, from this war and it could not have been fought. For that
matter the last seventy-five years of the world’s history has belonged
to the engineers. Ninety per cent. of all our comforts, conveniences,
and practical achievements is due to their work, and what wonders
have been wrought in this time! The engineer has accomplished more in
the field of transportation than in any other realm. Transportation,
represented by the railroads, the steamships, the automobiles, and the
better roads that have been built to accommodate them, makes up the
chief differences between our age and all those ages preceding.
=The Railway Systems.= There is being operated in the United States at
the present time 230,000 miles of railroads. The mileage which they
cover if stretched about the earth would belt the globe nine times.
The total mileage for the whole world is about 700,000; all of Europe
has 215,140 miles. The United States and Canada together have almost
half the total mileage of the world and as much as all of Europe and
Asia combined. In 1915 the railroads of the United States carried
976,303,602 passengers and moved 1,802,018,177 tons of freight. The
railway companies employed 1,654,075 men and women. The average hourly
pay for these workers, figured on the basis of the eight-hour day,
is twenty-six cents. Railroading is a most difficult and dangerous
occupation, and yet there is something in the work itself that appeals
to the worker. “Once a railroad man, always a railroad man,” as one
brakeman put it.
There was a railroad wreck on the Southern Pacific line just south of
Livermore, California, some years ago. The engine fell over into a
creek and the engineer was caught underneath, and pressed down into
the soft sand. It was eighteen hours before he was rescued; his chest
was crushed and he was horribly burned but by some miracle he lived.
The railway company gave him a pension in recognition of his faithful
services of about twelve years, and he was able to live on the income
without working. This invalided engineer was idle for almost ten
months; he then went back to the company and asked to be put on an
engine again. He was not considered strong enough to run a passenger
engine, but was supremely happy when put in charge of a switch engine
in the train-yards of Sacramento. He said, “It was the happiest day of
my life when I pulled the throttle, and again felt the engine begin to
move out under my touch and control.”
=Casualty Lists.= In the year 1916, the steam railways of the United
States injured 196,722 people and killed 10,001. The electric railways
for the same period injured 4,606 and killed 518. Of these persons,
4,928 were killed while riding as passengers, or while at work in the
performance of their tasks. The remainder were killed while walking
upon the railway tracks or in other ways trespassing.
One bitter cold day a Lackawanna train from New York going to Buffalo
was nearing a little village near Binghamton when the brakeman,
muffling up his ears, stepped out on the rear platform to be ready to
signal as the train stopped at the near-by crossing. The train stopped
and then gave four blasts on the whistle calling in the brakeman. There
was a delay and the conductor went back to find out why the brakeman
did not come, but could not see him anywhere down the line. The train
was late and running badly, so instead of backing up to look for the
brakeman, the conductor gave orders for the train to go ahead and
reported the fact at the next station. Two stations beyond word reached
him that the body of the brakeman had been found beside the track. He
had stepped out on the rear platform just as the train rounded a curve
and the platform being slippery he lost his footing and was thrown off
and killed instantly. The brakeman’s family was protected because he
was engaged in interstate commerce, but one more human being was lost
in the performance of his daily task. The inventions such as patent
coupling devices, block signals, and the vestibule cars, have done
away with a great many accidents, but in the very nature of the case,
there will always be danger in the work done by the men who operate our
trains.
=The Human Factor.= The railroads of the country are made as safe as
possible by installing wonderful devices which work automatically.
The tracks are inspected, old ties replaced by new ones; bolts are
tested, yet in spite of all the excellent devices to secure safety,
accidents occur in sickening succession. An entire circus company was
recently wiped out by an accident on the Michigan Central Railroad. The
members of the circus were nearly all asleep when a train from the rear
plunged through their cars killing nearly one hundred and injuring
over one hundred others. The wreckage caught fire and many of the
bodies were cremated. Reports would indicate that this accident was one
of those unavoidable things that happen so often in railroading.
Experiences in speaking before groups of railroad men prove that the
question of danger is always before the minds of the workers. These men
literally carry their lives in their hands. For after all, no matter
how perfectly the track may be laid, and in spite of the fact that
the signals are all set, there is always the human factor to be taken
into consideration. The flagman may not go back far enough from the
train that is stopped so that the one following can be brought to a
halt before crashing into the train ahead. Another thing that enters
into the situation is the fact that men who are working surrounded
by constant perils are likely to become careless. “I carry with me a
sense of responsibility for the life of every man, woman, and child who
rides on my train.” This was the statement of a conscientious railroad
engineer. “But,” he continued, “I am in constant fear that my train
will be wrecked through the carelessness of somebody else.” This man
recognized a need that is essential in securing safety in traveling
on our railroads, that is, a sense of corporate responsibility; by
this we mean, that the entire group of men, all the workers and all of
those who are responsible for the operation of the roads should feel
the same sense of responsibility that the individual engineer feels.
To secure this condition the railroad companies must realize that they
are dealing with human beings; and that the men who furnish the human
element in the railroad equation are entitled to a voice and a share
in the management of the line.
=Wages and Hours of Work.= When the railroad employees threatened to
strike in 1917 and asked for an eight-hour day and an increase of
wages, there was a great deal of discussion as to whether the companies
or the men were in the right. Most people sided with the companies
against the men, because there is an idea among the people that the
railroad men are the best paid employees in any of our industries.
Contrary to the general understanding, the railroad employees for the
most part are not well paid. The government has recognized the need for
increased wages and has made advances to nearly all classes of railway
employees since federal control went into effect. The average rate for
a normal day’s work for engineers in the freight service throughout the
eastern territory is $4.85, conductors $4, brakemen $2.67, and firemen
$3.25. These are the best paid of all the railroad employees. Tower
men, who have in their care the lives of millions of passengers as they
protect crossings, receive from $40 to $50 a month. Telegraphers, train
dispatchers, track inspectors, and other employees, outside of the four
great brotherhoods, made up of the engineers, conductors, brakemen, and
firemen, are very poorly paid. And even the wages for the best paid and
most skilful operators, the brakeman and the fireman, for instance, are
so low that it means that in order to earn a living wage they must make
a great deal through overtime.
The effect of this low wage is shown in the number of employees who are
changed every year. In the first nine months of 1917 in the eastern
territory three men were employed for every one job filled. This is
known as the turn-over in employment and it is unusually high because
the wages are below standard, the hours long, and the work hard and
dangerous. There is a continual change in the operating forces and a
consequent lack of efficiency. Another consideration to be taken into
account in studying the wages and lives of railway workers is that of
the effect of the work upon the workers. An engineer must put in years
as a fireman before he can secure the right to run an engine, and then
a dozen or fifteen years is about the length of time that he can depend
on keeping his job. He is fortunate indeed if he earns a good wage for
this length of time. The wear and tear on muscles, nerves, eyes, ears,
kidneys, and heart is almost certain to break down the strongest body
in a few years. Some few men stand the strain and hold on for twenty
years but these are the rare exceptions.
=Fictitious Values and the Railways.= The railroad business deals in
a commodity that may be termed public service. Almost more than any
other business it is dependent for success upon the good-will of the
public. The earnings of the railroads have been enormous and even if
their operating expenses are high, there have been big profits made,
and these profits have been taken up to a large extent in paying
dividends upon fictitious values. This is the most serious situation
that threatens the railroad system of the United States. For instance,
a road is built and a certain amount of money put into the equipment
and rolling stock, such as engines, coaches, and freight-cars. The
employees are hired and the road begins to do business as a regular
passenger and freight carrier. Out of its total receipts it must pay a
fixed amount for up-keep, for new equipment, and for wages, besides the
interest on the money it has borrowed. The balance that is left from
the amount of money received by the road and the amount it must pay out
marks its own profits. This is given to the owners of the road.
For many years the railroads felt that they needed special legislation;
and money was spent in buying up legislators, in corrupting city
councils, and in gaining the influence of noted men who would agree
to return certain favors to the road for certain concessions given. A
common practise in connection with this was the giving of free passes
to all statesmen and newspaper men. In addition to this the railroad
property became valuable as a factor in the stock market, and new stock
was continually being issued. This stock would be sold and in many
cases no new equipment put into the road, so that at the present time
some of the railroads of the United States have three or four times as
much stock as they have actual physical value for their stock.
A good illustration of this business situation would be that you
as owner of a house worth $4,000 should make or form a cooperative
housekeeping company and sell shares in this new company, basing the
value of the total amount of shares upon the $4,000 that the house
is worth. You could sell forty shares each for $100. This would be
perfectly legitimate and a good business transaction, because at any
time every share would have back of it one-fortieth of the total value
of the house. But suppose instead of selling forty shares, you should
capitalize your house at $40,000 and sell 400 shares at $100 a piece,
instead of the forty shares. The extra valuation would be known as
watered stock, because there would be no real value attached to it. You
would be selling something that neither you nor anybody else possessed.
It is said that the term watered stock came from the practise of one
of the early financiers who brought cattle from the West to sell in
the New York market when New York was a very small city. He drove the
cattle a long distance on the last day, and then gave them salt the
night before arrival, so that they were inordinately thirsty. Just
before they were sold and weighed he would let them drink all the water
they wanted, so that the man who bought them was paying for a great
deal of water in addition to the actual amount of beef he received.
The result of this financial device known as watered stock has been
disastrous for many of our railway companies, and the plight of the
United States railroads has been a scandal for years.
=Regulating the Railroads.= The legislature of nearly every state
has tried to remedy the railway situation. The commissions in the
various states have frequently found themselves in each other’s way.
The Interstate Commerce Commission appointed by the United States
government for the purpose of regulating railroads is one of the most
efficient bodies in the entire government and has rendered remarkable
services. The citizens of the United States are individualists and
believe strongly in letting each business adjust its own difficulties
as best it can. With the growth of the world commerce without, and
the development of the country’s trade within, however, many men are
coming to believe that the only way out of difficulties is through a
larger degree of government control, tending finally to government
ownership of all the means of transportation. The strongest argument in
favor of government ownership is the success of the Interstate Commerce
Commission. During the last ten years there has come about a very
radical change in the relations existing between the various railways
and the general public. During the period between 1850 and 1900 the
railways were masters of the situation; and the financiers who built
and operated them were despots, more or less benevolent or the opposite
according to their personal temperaments. The railway presidents
during that period really regarded their roads as private property
to be managed as they saw fit. This theory built up a great railroad
system in the country, but the theory is not big enough to meet the new
national demands that are put upon the common carriers of the day. The
railroads are now pleading with the public to recognize them as public
institutions primarily interested in serving the people.
[Illustration:
Press Illustrating Service.
In New York harbor and on other waterways, living upon the canal-boats
and barges, are the families of the workers.]
=Railroads and Churches.= The railroad situation is too complicated
for us to attempt a solution of it in a church study class. It will
demand years of experimentation and a degree of personal service on
the part of the best and ablest men of our nation. What the church can
and must do is to try to estimate the value of the principles that are
involved in the railroad development and management. This can be done
by following the story of the railroad as told by the writers in the
public magazines of the last ten years. The history of our railroad
legislation is also available for us in the records of the Interstate
Commerce Commission. Each study group should write to Washington and
get the literature issued by this commission. Much of it will be
found to be dry reading, being largely a compilation of statistics;
and these statistics dealing in figures so large that they mean very
little to us. The recommendations, however, and the conclusions are of
practical value and will be found to be extremely helpful in the wise
and just conclusion regarding our attitude toward the railroad as a
national institution.
=Other Means of Transportation.= The work of the men engaged in
transportation is not by any means confined to the workers on the
railroads. In our cities there are thousands of men employed on the
street-cars, elevated railroads, and subway railways. The interurban
traction lines employ hundreds of thousands of men. A careful study has
been made of the situation affecting these workers by the Department
of Labor of the United States, and its report is based upon facts
ascertained from actual conditions found in all the principal cities
of the country. Without exception the street-car men, including
conductors, motormen, linesmen, and ticket-sellers, are poorly paid.
Many of the cities are paying the men much less than a living wage.
What do you know about the conditions in the street-cars in your own
city? Where do the men who operate these cars live? What about their
families? A motorman on one of the elevated railway lines of Chicago
shot himself a few years ago. The note he left said: “I have four
children and it is impossible with the rising cost of living for me
to maintain my home on $2.12 a day. I have a Life Insurance policy
for $2,000 and this is worth more to my wife and children than I earn
at present.” The street-car lines in most of our cities are owned and
controlled by capitalists living in some other city, and they are
operated, not for the benefit of the city, but simply for profits. The
frequent strikes on the street-car lines are the direct result of this
foolish policy of our cities of allowing themselves to be exploited
by groups of business men who have no interest in the city, but hold
toward it, its citizens, and its own workers, the attitude of a set
of political and social freebooters. A few places only have attempted
municipal ownership, and in these cases it has met with a large
measure of success. The lines owned and operated by the San Francisco
municipality have proved so successful that the business men are all
enthusiastic over the policy.
Another group that aids in providing transportation is made up of
the men on boats on the lakes, rivers, and canals; those who come to
our shores from other nations traveling by sea in foreign boats; the
sailors on our merchant marine; and the thousands of workers on the
docks and lighters in our harbors. In connection with this great work,
Andrew Furuseth, president of the International Seamen’s Union, stands
out as a remarkable figure. He is a Scandinavian by birth, and worked
his way up from the simple life of a sailor before the mast until he is
now the best known sailor in all the world. Mr. Furuseth has a great
heart, and has fought long and hard for his fellow workers; he might
be rich to-day, but as head of the union he accepts only the pay of a
first-class seaman and is literally giving his life for others. At a
meeting of the City Club in Rochester which he addressed some years
ago, one of the gentlemen present turned to his companion and said:
“Just look at Furuseth. In every line of his face there is written a
chapter of the tragedy and pathos of the men who go down to the sea in
ships.”
The sailor has been practically a prisoner always. When he signed his
work papers he put himself under the control of an absolute autocrat.
Until recently the master of a ship at sea recognized no authority
greater than himself, and when the boat landed at any port, no matter
what the treatment might have been, the seaman could not desert,
otherwise he would be arrested and imprisoned. Furuseth protested
against this inhuman treatment, and through a long period of years kept
demanding that seamen, “the last slaves” as he called them, be made
free. Finally his efforts were successful and on March, 1915, there was
approved by the Congress of the United States an Act which promotes the
welfare of the American seaman in the merchant marine. It abolishes
arrest and imprisonment for desertion, and it secured the abrogation
of treaty provisions between the different nations which guaranteed
that American sailors would be treated as felons if they deserted in a
foreign port. It also provided additional safety at sea for all persons
upon a boat; one of its provisions being that there shall be carried on
every passenger-carrying steamer or sailing vessel enough life-boats
so that each passenger and each man of the crew will have a seat and
a chance for escape in case of an accident. It is interesting to note
that this Act was passed as a direct result of the sinking of the
_Titanic_.
=The World of the Transportation Men.= The transportation men live in a
world apart. How many sailors do you know? How many street-car men? How
many railroaders? Have you ever wondered where the conductor on the
street-car upon which you ride so often lives? “Yes, we have a little
church, but it is over across the tracks where the railroad men live,
and I always attend the Presbyterian Church here.” This was the excuse
given by a gentleman for not attending the church of the denomination
to which he had belonged before he moved into a new community near
Chicago. We do not want a church to be known as the Railroad Men’s
Church or the Sailors’ Church or the Street-Car Workers’ Church. This
is not the way to be the best kind of a neighbor. What we do want is
for the church everywhere to take an interest in these men who are
providing for our transportation and also carrying the necessities
of life for all the world. We come into personal relationships with
many of them in a business way, and they all do much to add to our
wealth, our happiness, and our comfort. We in turn as individuals and
as members of the church should acquaint ourselves with the conditions
surrounding them.
For instance, in the waters of the New York harbor, living upon the
canal-boats which move in and out carrying coal, hay, and other rough
freight, are the families of the workers, and in these families there
are approximately 5,000 children. They are at one place to-day and
another place to-morrow. These people have no citizenship in the best
sense of the word. Many of the men do not vote because they live in
no locality long enough to register. The questions of schooling, of
church privileges, and of all social contact are serious ones. Yet how
many people in New York City, or for that matter in any of the smaller
towns and villages where these boats land, have ever once thought of
the status and social conditions of these men, and women, and their
children? Things we know. The things which the boats and the railroads
carry and that other thing that looms so large, the profits that are
made from transportation, are regarded as very important; but we have
paid scant attention to the men who produce things and carry them from
place to place.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WORLD OF THE MAKERS OF LUXURIES
“I would not like to work in a candy store,” said a young lad, “because
then I could not have the fun of buying candy.” A visitor to Atlantic
City stepped into one of the shops to make a purchase. She said to the
little girl in charge, “It must be delightful to be able to live in
Atlantic City and work right here on the boardwalk.” “You may think
so,” replied the girl. “But I guess if you put in all your time in this
store, and had to come to work at eight in the morning and work until
nine at night every day; and all the time saw these thousands of people
passing along outside, going up and down, with nothing to do but just
enjoy themselves, you would not think it is such a snap.” Two boys
were playing the game of “wish.” When the turn of the youngest came,
he said, “I wish that I worked in a chocolate factory, then I could
have all the chocolate I wanted to eat.” When we become acquainted with
the people who are at work producing the luxuries, we find a common
and far-reaching disillusionment. The hardest work in the world is to
work when other people are playing, or work hard ourselves just for the
purpose of giving other people enjoyment. And yet there are literally
hundreds of thousands of people who spend their lives in producing
luxuries.
Oliver Wendell Holmes used to say that if he could just have the
luxuries, he would not care anything about the necessities of life.
This was a whimsical way of stating a fact that is common to all
experience, that is, that life is enriched by the luxuries we enjoy. I
asked a man of the typographical union what he considered the one thing
that had done most for the advancement of printers. He replied, “Pianos
in their parlors.” By this he meant that when hours were decreased and
wages increased, printers began to have something to hope for; and
with a margin of money they bought luxuries, and in the margin of time
enjoyed them. Thus they laid the foundation for future development.
=Luxuries.= What constitutes a luxury? This is a difficult question
to answer. Some people think that it is a luxury to take a bath. In
fact, many of the monastic orders put special virtue on foregoing the
use of soap and water. An old gentleman living in a little town near
Chicago who owned a great deal of the property in the town, fought
every effort to put in water-works and a sewer system. As the climax of
an impassioned speech at a public meeting in which he had denounced the
extravagances of the present time, he said: “These new notions of our
young people are going to ruin us. My daughter made such a fuss that
nine years ago I put a bathtub in our house, but I never use it and I
guess I am about as healthy as any man in town.” One of the religious
sects forbids its members the use of buttons on their clothes, as they
are regarded as useless luxuries. They fasten their clothes together
with hooks and eyes. Cutting the hair, shaving the beard, wearing gold
and silver, adorning the person in any way, all of these things are
considered luxuries by some persons. Luxury is really a thing that we
can get along without. But at best it is a relative term, for what one
person would consider a luxury another would consider a necessity.
=Growth by Wants, Not Needs.= A merchant in Memphis had a carload of
supplies arrive early one Saturday morning. He was very anxious to
get the goods unloaded so that he could release the car. He started
out to get help, but every Negro on the street had some good excuse
why he could not help. Meeting an old fellow on the corner he said to
him, “Look here, Bob, what is the trouble with all these Negroes? Not
one of them wants to work and yet they all seem to have plenty of time
and nothing to do.” “It’s just like this, Boss,” replied old Bob. “All
the worth-while niggers is out working, ’cause you see they’s got to
support their Fords. These here fellers ain’t no good; don’t want cyars
and won’t work nohow when the sun shines on both sides of the street at
de same time.” In this statement we have summed up the philosophy of
all workers. It is only when we desire something better than we have
and are willing to work for the thing desired that we begin to advance.
Luxuries are the things that are not essential for mere existence, but
they are the things that are of infinite value in enriching and adding
to the meaning of life.
=Classes of Luxuries.= Luxuries can be roughly divided into two
classes, those that are harmless and those that are hurtful. The extra
dress, the piece of cake, the sugar in our coffee, the coffee itself,
and in fact a great many of the things we wear, eat, and drink are
luxuries. The line between these things and necessities is such a thin
one that it is hard to know just when a thing ceases to be a necessity
and becomes a luxury. Most things are harmless in and of themselves,
and it must be acknowledged, luxuries have the effect of increasing
the value and meaning of life. There are, however, luxuries such as
beer, wine, whisky, brandy, and other alcoholic stimulants used as
beverages, also tobacco used as snuff, for chewing or for smoking,
which add nothing to life; but on the contrary must be classed with
the habit-forming drugs so injurious to the race. In this chapter we
are considering luxuries from the standpoint of production, and not
the moral value involved in their use. Therefore, we must think of
the workers in the brewery, the cigar and cigaret makers, the makers
of artificial flowers and willow plumes as all belonging to the same
class. They are the ones who are making the things that are not
absolutely necessary for our existence. Were the production of bread to
stop we could not live. Iron, steel, coal, and transportation are all
part and parcel of our very existence, but we could get along very well
if not another artificial flower, cigar, or fancy dress were made.
=The Cigarmakers.= The cigarmakers living in Tampa and Key West form
the most complete compact group of workers to be found anywhere in
the United States who are interested solely in producing luxuries.
Tampa is known as “The city that furnishes the world’s smoke.” Last
year this city shipped (in round numbers) 300,000,000 cigars! Havana
and Key West have always been considered the principal cigar cities,
but the production in these latter places has been declining for a
number of years, while it has been increasing in Tampa. It was a clash
between the Cuban and Spanish workers at Key West which led the first
manufacturer to move from that city and build his factory at Tampa.
To-day there are 15,000 Cuban and Spanish workers employed in Tampa in
making cigars. A person could live in the city, and by restricting his
business to certain districts, from one year’s beginning to the end
would never hear a word spoken in any language except Spanish. The city
is a foreign city, and a city of workers producing a luxury that all
the world demands. Since the time that Columbus sent his men to explore
the island of Cuba in November, 1492, and found the natives “carrying
and smoking firebrands” made from loosely rolled leaves of a weed which
grew extensively on the island, until the present time men everywhere
have found enjoyment and pleasure in the narcotic value of tobacco.
=The Making of a Cigar.= In its manufacture a cigar goes through a
process dependent upon the knowledge and skill gained from years of
practise on the part of the worker. The tobacco that is used in making
the best cigars still comes from the island of Cuba. It is grown very
carefully, cured, baled, and shipped under bond to the United States
government. The bales as they are received at the tobacco factory weigh
from 80 to 120 pounds. The tobacco is of two qualities, that to be used
as a filler (which makes up the body of the cigar), and that which is
known as the wrapper or the outside covering. From the time that the
tobacco begins to grow until the cigars are packed in the boxes ready
for shipment the weed requires special care and attention. As the bales
of tobacco are brought into the factory they have to be piled in a
certain way. Some of them are piled high, some of them low, some on
their sides, and some on their ends; all depending upon the quality and
conditions of the leaves.
The tobacco is cured by a process which adds to its value; and the
curing must be carried on with precision, for a faulty method will
spoil the best tobacco that can be grown. Any one who has visited Tampa
is impressed with the humidity of the atmosphere. The climate of Cuba
is more nearly reproduced there than in any other city in America, and
because of its equable temperature, it being neither too hot nor too
cold, the city has become famous as the manufacturing center for cigars.
The cigarmakers sit at long tables in parallel rows throughout the
room. In one room in a large factory eight hundred workers sit as close
together as possible. The tools of the trade are a flat, broad-bladed
knife, a hard block, a gage, and a rule. This gage is simply a hole
bored through a piece of board and as the worker makes up the cigar,
from time to time he puts it through the hole in the board to see that
it is the proper size and places it against the rule to see that it is
the proper length. Should it be too large it must be rolled tighter,
if too small it must be loosened up a bit. Much depends upon the way
a cigar is rolled. “I learned to make a cigar in three months,” said
a Cuban cigarmaker, “but it took me two years to learn how to put an
end on it.” This is the real test, and until a machine is invented
which can turn this trick, the hand-made cigars, rolled, and finished
according to the old Spanish method, will hold first place.
=The Reader in the Factory.= The Tampa cigarmakers are all either
Spanish or Cuban, and in conversation they gesticulate with their
hands to such an extent that it is impossible for them to talk and work
at the same time. Hence, the manufacturers are very sympathetic with
the old custom of maintaining a reader in the factory. This reader has
a little balcony from which he reads to the employees while they are at
work, making his selections from current magazines, newspapers, novels,
telegrams, dispatches from abroad, and extracts from books on national
history. It is an interesting sight to see a factory of four or five
hundred workers busily engaged in plying their trade, and listening
at the same time to a story read by the paid reader, who, with coat
off and suspenders hanging, gesticulates and shouts at the top of his
voice. One of the readers in a Tampa factory has held his position for
twenty years. He reads daily from the New York _Herald_, translating
the news articles into Spanish as he reads them. The reader is well
paid, for each worker gives him twenty-five cents a week; and it is
reported that some of these men receive as high as $300 a month. The
workers decide what shall be read. Some years ago there was a strike
in one of the factories occasioned by a protest on the part of the
women workers against the reading of an especially vulgar novel. The
management ordered the reading of this novel stopped. The men then laid
down their tools and refused to go back to work until they were assured
that the story would be continued. Among the cigarmakers the tradition
is that the custom of reading grew out of the desire of the early
workers for a more liberal education than was offered by the church and
its schools.
=Wages and Unions.= The wages of the cigarmakers are based on the
piece-work system. An expert may make as high as $35 a week; the
average is a little higher than in other employments using the same
grade of labor. Some years ago, when a bitter strike was conducted
in Tampa, the question of wages was one of the grievances of the men
but was not the real trouble, for the problem in Tampa now as well
as then is racial and psychological rather than economic. The strike
was settled on the basis of an agreement called the “equalization
agreement.” This provided for the appointment of a board to be composed
of three manufacturers and three cigarmakers who would meet regularly,
hear complaints, and make adjustments. Most of the workers belong to
the union, and under this agreement there is a fair degree of peace in
the industry.
One great difficulty is that the workers in the cigar industry carry
into their trade no moral enthusiasm. They are doing something that
is not absolutely requisite for human welfare, and while they make
good money, they have no commanding purpose to impel them to carry on
their work. The people live simple lives for the most part. On Saturday
nights the streets of the city are filled with people, and every one
is in a holiday mood. The majority of the cigar workers in Tampa are
communicants in the Roman Catholic Church and it is the finest building
in the city. It is constructed of marble and decorated with magnificent
windows. The church takes little interest, however, in social or
economic matters. One of the workers said to me the last time I was in
the city, “When the business men forced us back to work, and through
their private army guarded the city with sawed-off shotguns, the
church was back of them. All the priests want is our money.” To the
cigarmakers a church is a church whether it be Catholic or Protestant.
They remember the days in Cuba under the domination of Spain when the
priests held them in a kind of bondage of fear, and made it easy for
the political forces to exploit them. In America they do not intend to
give the church a chance at them.
The Cuban is easily pleased; very emotional, and more inclined to be
fickle than the American or Englishman. A few years ago the butchers of
Tampa raised the price of meat. Just at that time there happened to be
a representative of the Industrial Workers of the World in the city.
He gathered some of the people together in East Tampa, harangued them
regarding their wrongs, and called a second meeting. He aroused so much
enthusiasm that nearly two thousand of the cigar workers quit their
jobs; procured sticks, and bought beefsteaks and stuck them on the end
of the sticks. Carrying these over their shoulders as though they were
banners, the whole mob marched through the streets to the City Hall,
where they demanded of the startled mayor, that he force the butchers
to reduce the price of beef. The mayor gave the necessary order and
the people then dispersed and went quietly back to their homes. Union
organizers complain that it is very difficult to maintain a union
of any strength among the cigar workers in Tampa. “They are very
enthusiastic for a time, but it is difficult for them to persistently
and constantly follow the union rules,” said one of the leaders.
The city of the cigarmakers swarms with children, many of these
youngsters play in the street, and as the climate is warm most of the
year, during the summer they wear very little clothing. Until recently
there was no provision made for organized play among the children of
the city. Even now the provision is totally inadequate.
=The Protestant Churches.= The Protestant churches have attempted to
do what they could among the cigarmakers; but the needs have been so
great and the equipment so inadequate that the best results have not
been secured. In West Tampa there is a very interesting piece of work
being conducted by the Methodist, the Baptist, and the Congregational
churches. One of the churches has a plant consisting of a church, a
school, and a house that is used as a social center for the entire
community. For many years two homes were operated by this church;
one for boys and one for girls. Some seven hundred children attend
the school in connection with the church. The services on Sunday
are in Spanish, and while it has not been possible always to secure
a large attendance from among the people, still there is usually
a representative and interesting group present. A man who served
as pastor of the Cuban church was for a number of years a regular
worker in one of the big cigar factories. This gave him a peculiar
relationship to the community. He was accepted as a friend and equal;
and was listened to with reverence and respect where another man would
not have secured a hearing.
[Illustration:
Photo from National Child Labor Committee.
The workers in the cigar industry carry into their trade no moral
enthusiasm, for they are doing something that is not absolutely
requisite for human welfare.]
=Some Results of the Work.= A little girl in the community where one
of the church homes is situated was arrested for being a vagrant. Her
face was dirty; she was barefooted and wore a torn, buttonless, brown
gingham dress that was positively filthy and which was held in place
by a safety-pin fastened in such a way as to give the whole dress a
weird, elfish look. The child’s picture was taken on the day that
she was arrested and committed to the care of the church. This picture
is a typical portrayal of childish rebellion against life and all
that it holds in store for the human race. Her mother was a worthless
woman, and the child had never known a father. All her life she had
really lived on the streets of the city. Her case was brought before
the Juvenile Court; she was put on probation and given into the care of
the workers in one of the little Protestant churches. She objected to
having her hair combed and refused to wash her face. Those in charge of
the home were almost in despair of being able to do anything with her.
However, they won her confidence by allowing her to go to a party where
they had a phonograph and motion pictures. They told her she could have
all the cake and lemonade she wanted; so once in her life under happier
conditions she had a chance for simple enjoyment and to be her natural
self. From that time on she began to take an interest in herself and
to gain in intelligence. Two years later she had her picture taken
and it was exhibited as the picture of the typical Cuban girl, for
she had developed into a perfect little beauty and showed capability.
This story illustrates better than almost anything else the infinite
possibilities in the Cuban people.
Some one said of the cigarmakers in Tampa that they were not Americans
and never could be, and further stated: “They are interested only in
their theaters, their clubs, their cock-fights, their coffee-houses,
and their gambling rooms.” It is true that they are interested in
these things; because they are by temperament a pleasure-loving,
happy-go-lucky sort of people and these resources are the expression
of their idea of life. If the church would meet the needs of these
people, it must be able to appreciate them, and sympathetically to
interpret life for them. They can all become, as indeed most of them
are now, good American citizens, but they will never be like the
Americans in our Northern cities. We must allow them to develop along
the lines of their own racial interests. How can we ever expect to be
friends with Latin America if we cannot learn how to be good neighbors
to the Latin Americans living in our own land?
=The Challenge of Conditions in the Factories.= The conditions in the
factories are not ideal by any means, nor is the nature of the business
such as to promote the highest type of character. The work is hard,
and it is performed in a heavy atmosphere poisoned with the breath of
many individuals, and vitiated by the odors of human bodies and damp
tobacco. The rooms where cigars are made have to be kept closed to save
the weed; and every window is down, and no matter how hot the weather,
not a breath of fresh air is allowed to enter the place. The atmosphere
is so bad that it gives one a headache even to pass through; imagine
what it would mean to spend your life working in such a place.
Tuberculosis makes deep inroads in the ranks of the workers. Statistics
show that the proportion of mortality among the cigar workers
from tuberculosis of the lungs is higher than in almost any other
occupation. Between the ages of 15 and 24 the proportionate mortality
from tuberculosis is 48.5 per cent. of the total deaths as compared
with 33.8 per cent. for all occupations.[3] The reason for this is that
the workers must sit for long hours at a table in a bad atmosphere and
surrounded by others, many of whom are suffering from tuberculosis.
There are nearly 50,000 members of the union and these men have been
fighting for years for a betterment of conditions. However, just as
in other trades, the employers claim that it is impossible to make
cigars without sacrifice of the working men and women. The workers
have accepted it there, as other workers have accepted it in other
occupations, with the stoic attitude that marks so many of the laborers
of our country.
[3] U. S. Bulletin of Labor, 1917.
One of the most noted social workers in America, a woman with strength
and charm of character, who is a leader in every radical movement,
began her life in a cigar factory. Later on she married a man of
wealth and has lived a life of ease ever since. She says of her early
experiences: “For twelve years I was a cigar worker in Cleveland. I
was ill-nourished and poorly clad. I worked at night as well as by
day to help piece out my family’s existence. I never had anything I
wanted.” This might be said of a great many of the cigar workers and
their families. The only difference would be that she did not tell all
of her story. In addition to the long hours there is an undermining
of the health that goes with it. Now all these people are working for
some one’s pleasure. They are making luxuries. The most radical person
I ever knew in my life was an eighteen-year-old girl whose parents
had lost their money. She was forced to go to work in a cigar factory
when she was twelve years old. She was bitter toward life and had no
faith or confidence in anything or in any person. Said she, “When I
look around and see people who have all the money and all the clothes
and all the good things that I want and can never have, I know that
conditions are unjust and must be changed. I don’t care what it costs;
I am going to do my part in fighting and agitating until there is a
change.” This is an attitude that is now growing very common. There are
deep-seated forces at work perpetuating these ideas. By valuing things
more than men these conditions are made a permanent part of our life.
=Furs.= “Why do you want to wear furs in the summer-time?” I asked a
young lady. It was an extremely hot day and she was wearing a white
dress with very short sleeves and cut low in the neck, but she had a
fox fur around her neck; there was quite a margin between the lower
edge of her fur and the upper edge of her dress. “Why,” she replied,
“I think it is pretty, don’t you?” This fur had come on a long journey
and gone through many processes before it came into her hands. Many
men and women had labored to produce it. The man who had caught the
fox probably had a line of traps stretched over nine or ten miles of
some stream in the northern part of Canada or Alaska. All through the
bitter cold of the winter he had lived alone in a cabin, and day after
day had tramped that line to take out the animals that had been caught.
Bringing them back to his cabin he skinned them; turned the hide over a
piece of board and stood it behind the stove to cure. Later the pelts
were brought out of the wilderness and sold into the hands of a group
of fur workers. They were then more fully cured, and passed on to the
makers of scarfs. All of these workers were producing a luxury.
=The Trappers’ Community.= In one of the regions of the Northwest where
trapping is carried on through the winter there are three little
settlements. There are only three white people and one white family in
two of them, and the third settlement, which is a trading post, has
about half a dozen white families. From the time that the snow falls
in the autumn until late in May of the following spring, no one comes
into these communities except the man carrying the mail who comes
once in about ten days. No one goes out from the community unless it
is absolutely necessary. The only ministers that ever visit there
are those who come in the summer to enjoy the fishing in the near-by
streams. The wife of a trapper in this region said to a minister:
“Our oldest girl is nearly thirteen years old. She has never been to
Sunday-school and never heard a sermon. She has never seen a church
and you are the only preacher to whom she has ever talked. When I was
married fifteen years ago in Missouri and we started for this country,
I had no idea that a girl who had been brought up in the church and was
a teacher in the Sunday-school could live so long in a community where
there is no church or religious service of any kind.” When we learn of
places like this where there are no churches, and then hear of some
small community that has six or eight churches and only about five or
six hundred people, we wonder if there is not a call for a new kind of
missionary effort and zeal. The church is not alone to blame nor is
any one wholly responsible for this condition, and yet we are all to
blame, for if it is necessary that a man should live on the outpost of
civilization it should be made possible for some of the good things of
civilization to be taken to him. In the foreign missionary work we have
crossed oceans, traversed mountains, translated the Bible into new
languages, and made every effort to reach new groups of people. In our
own land we have neglected people just because they seemingly live in a
world outside of our own. While they are producing the things we demand
and use, we have forgotten the men who have brought these things to us.
=The Theater.= People have always been interested in seeing life
presented in a play. The theater has had a large place in the history
of every nation. It has furnished the means of recreation and
amusement, and in a large measure it has been a great educator of the
people. Religion was once taught through the theater. In fact, much
of our church ritual is taken from performances that were meant to
symbolize great facts and emotions of human life. The modern theater
has become highly commercialized, and those who attend the performances
continually demand more magnificent scenery, more elaborate costumes,
and more thrills. What of the performers? Have you ever wondered, as
you looked at the play, just how the people who are taking part would
look if you saw them off the stage? For instance, there is a girl that
is playing the part of an old woman. She is dressed in a plain black,
close-fitting gown, and hobbles across the stage leaning heavily upon a
stick. In actual life she is a young woman under twenty-five years of
age, has bright red hair, a charming smile, a figure that her friends
describe as willowy, and walks with a springy step like that of a high
school girl. Another character in the play is a woman who plays the
part of the vampire. At home surrounded by her three children, she is a
demure, domestic little body.
A few years ago one of our theatrical critics said that a glimpse
behind the scenes would cure almost any girl of the desire to become an
actress. The glamor is all in front of the curtain. Behind the scenes
we come face to face with a hard-working group of men and women who are
doing their best to furnish amusement. One of the leading actresses,
in writing the history of her life, said that the only opportunity for
success on the stage was for the person who comprehends fully that the
theater offers but one thing--a chance for long hours of drudgery and
the uncertain rewards that come from the hands of a fickle public. She
described vividly the actors’ boarding-house, with its narrow cramped
bedrooms; its dimly-lit halls, with the faded and worn carpet; the
smell of cooking that permeated the whole place “like the ghost of a
thousand dead dinners;” the bitter loneliness, the jealousies, the
misunderstandings, and she added, “my whole being revolts against all
the petty details of the life.” Then there is the traveling; nights on
the train and days spent in the hotels until time to go to the opera
house; then the feverish excitement of dressing; the play; and back to
the hotel for a few hours’ sleep and away again to another town.
The trouble is that most of the young people who think that they
would like to go on the stage think only of the theaters in New York,
Chicago, Boston, or in one of the other large cities. The great
majority of the actor-folk spend most of their time traveling from
place to place. There are comparatively few plays that enjoy long
runs. Nowadays in one-night stands there are few places where special
rates at the hotels are secured for actors. Usually the worst rooms
in the house are assigned to them. In fact, the rooms that are given
to the actors and actresses are known in a great many hotels as the
Soubrette Row. The best rooms are saved for the regular patrons of the
house, such as traveling salesmen, while anything is “good enough for
the actor.” In China the player folk live to themselves. They have no
other companions but form a class of their own. We have not recognized
the caste system in this country, and we do not officially ostracise
the players, but in effect this is what we do. Their world is a world
apart, yet they are the ones that help to amuse us. Each year we pay
millions of dollars into the coffers of the theaters to see plays that
are produced by these men and women who work hard, and who receive but
little for their toil.
Once in a while the newspapers tell the story of some old actor, who
has just died poor, broken down, and forgotten by the public. One of
the most pathetic figures of these modern days was that of an old actor
in Brooklyn, who had to be buried at the expense of his friends. They
took up a collection to buy the casket in which he now rests; otherwise
he would have been buried in the potter’s field although thirty years
ago he was one of the most popular men on Broadway. There are thousands
of actors and actresses and they live for the most part to themselves.
The Actors’ Church Alliance was formed some years ago and has branches
in many of our cities. There is, too, an organization known as the
Actors’ Fund, which provides relief for the poor found among these
hard-working men and women who give so much pleasure to millions of
people.
=The Motion Pictures.= The motion-picture business has become one of
the greatest enterprises of our day. In 1914 there were over 20,000
motion-picture theaters in the United States. The year before that
three hundred million dollars was spent for films, and over five
billion paid admissions were recorded throughout the country. The
motion-picture has made possible the reproduction of the best plays,
and they are offered to the people at a very low price. Five and
ten cents will permit any one to be amused for a whole evening. The
motion-picture theater possesses great educational possibilities. It
has revolutionized our ideas of entertainment. The best books have been
put into films and more people than ever before are having a chance
to read. This is having a profound effect upon our lives, for as has
been said, “the thing we see impresses us more than what we hear.” We
often say, “it went in one ear and out the other” but no one ever says,
“it went in one eye and out the other.” The making of films requires
the work of thousands of actors; besides carpenters, masons, machine
operators, directors, and managers. It is a huge business!
A crowd gathered in New York at Thirty-fourth Street and Second Avenue
one Saturday afternoon. A man was beating a boy when a disheveled woman
ran out from the side entrance of a saloon and threw herself upon this
beast. He grasped her by the throat and was just about to strangle her,
when the boy, released from the clutches of the man, stabbed him in the
back with a knife and thus freed his mother. It happened so quickly
that many of the crowd thought that they were looking upon a real
tragedy. It proved to be simply a “movie” being enacted upon the street.
In a Florida city an automobile dashed into town; a young girl was in
the back seat, while in the front was a young man driving the machine
with one hand and holding a preacher down with the other. They stopped
in front of a church; went inside, and there they were met by two other
men, accomplices of the young fellow, and who stood one on either side
of the minister with revolvers at his head and forced him to perform
the marriage ceremony. An outrage in real life, but really played for
the movies.
In the West there are cities devoted entirely to the motion-picture
industry. In some of the elaborate plays hundreds of thousands of
dollars are expended in getting the scenic effects. Cities have been
built and then burned to give the effect of a sacked town being
destroyed by the enemy. Shipwrecks have been shown where real ships
have been purchased, and then run upon the rocks and deliberately
wrecked to get the proper setting for the pictures and the necessary
thrills for the people. What of these people who follow the
motion-picture industry for a living? Their lives are apart from the
rest of the community. It seems fascinating, but it is one filled with
hard labor, uncertain hours, and affords rather scanty pay. The pastor
of one of the Los Angeles churches attempted to reach the people living
in the near-by “movie-city” but he failed. A plan should be devised
whereby a sympathetic understanding might bring these hard-working
people into relationship with the church. The influence of such a tie
would be far-reaching in results.
=The Makers of Other Luxuries.= Another group of workers are those
who make jewelry; others are at work making fancy costumes, special
designs in millinery, and artificial flowers. In fact, when we take
a census of all of the people who are at work serving the demands of
this age, which loves the extraordinary and insists upon luxuries as
a right, you find that there are in reality hundreds of thousands of
these workers who are in every sense of the word serving humanity.
Whether they are serving in the highest and best way is not the
question we are discussing. As long as we tolerate an age of luxury
and draft an army of thousands of men, women, and children to help
produce these luxuries, so long must we consider the needs of the men,
women, and children so drafted. The church, if its appeal is to reach
all the groups, must reach all the workers who are making possible the
abundance of things that minister to an age of luxury.
CHAPTER IX
THE WORLD OF SEASONAL LABOR AND THE CASUAL WORKERS
“Why is it that those who produce food are hungry, and that those who
make clothes are ragged? Why, moreover, is it that those who build
palaces are homeless, and that those who do the nation’s work are
forced to choose between beggary, crime, or suicide in a nation that
has fertile soil enough to feed and clothe the world; material enough
to build homes to house all peoples, an enormous productive capacity
through labor-saving machinery of forty thousand million man-power;
and where there are only sixty-five million souls to feed, clothe, and
shelter?”
The foregoing questions were put into the platform and issued by the
Industrial Army of 1894 which was known as Coxey’s army. That year was
one of great depression all over the United States. The causes for the
depression were discussed very widely at the time. It was the year
following the great World’s Fair in Chicago and hundreds of thousands
of men were out of employment. There was suffering and deprivation in
all the cities of the United States. Charitable institutions were taxed
to their limit by the new responsibilities put upon them. The idea of
having all the unemployed form themselves into a great army of peace,
and march to Washington for the purpose of presenting to the President
and Congress a petition for the right to labor, developed in the mind
of a man named Coxey who lived at Masillon, Ohio. He gathered together
the first army numbering several thousand men. These men were organized
into companies, and officers were appointed after the fashion of the
regular military customs.
Similar armies mobilized in other parts of the country. One at Los
Angeles, another at San Francisco, one in Boston, and one in the
Northwest, started towards Washington at one time. There were about
10,000 men on the march. They were ridiculed, persecuted, and feared.
When the army that started from San Francisco reached Sacramento, it
encamped outside the city. On Sunday night this curious army marched
down into the center of the town, halted before the first church it
came to, then the men filed in and in an orderly fashion filled up
every pew. The remainder of the army marched on to the next church and
did the same thing. This was repeated until every church in the city
was filled to its capacity. This was the first and probably the last
time in the history of that city when church pews were at a premium on
Sunday night.
The men of this army were harmless for the most part. A great many
of them were worthless fellows, but the vast majority were honest
workingmen who had been thrown out of employment, and owing to the
circumstances of the times were unable to find anything to do, and,
consequently, were in despair. Their plan was to go quietly across the
country and when they arrived in Washington simply to fold their arms
and ask the government what it was going to do for them. Only a few of
the men of Coxey’s army reached Washington and the spectacular scheme
failed. It, however, emphasized the need of the time and showed up the
extreme danger in the situation.
=The Unemployed.= The unemployed man presents a real problem to
society. Carlyle said, “A man willing to work, and unable to find work
is, perhaps, the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under
the sun.” Many well-to-do people living in comfortable circumstances,
with position and income assured, assert that if a man wants work he
can always find it, and that the only men unemployed are the shiftless
and the lazy. Right now the war has absorbed all the surplus labor,
and a condition exists different from any that we have previously
known in the history of America. Immigration has been cut off and the
demands for new enterprises have called for hundreds of thousands of
new workers, so that at the present time there is no reason why any
man should be out of work. In fact, so serious has the need for men
become that the latest interpretation put upon the draft law amounts
practically to a conscription of labor for all men of draft age.
=The Banana Boat.= A whistle sounded on the Mississippi river just
below New Orleans early one afternoon last summer. It was a dismal,
rainy day, and as the long screech died away the sound seemed almost
prophetic of some coming disaster. Soon a huge steamship painted
drab-gray, with a red diamond upon its smoke-stack, nosed its way from
out of the mist and crowded in close to the pier. Scarcely were the
ropes fast when there began to appear on the dock men black and white,
ragged, unkempt fellows who had hurried from the near-by saloons,
poolrooms, and other lounging places. This boat was just in from
Central America loaded down with bananas. Two enormous unloaders were
set up alongside of the vessel. The machinery of these started and an
endless belt, which traveled to the bottom of the hold and out again,
came up loaded with bunches of bananas. The fruit was brought down and
thrown upon a table. Here two men, standing one on either side of the
traveling belt, would take hold of a bunch of bananas and place it upon
the shoulders of a third man, who in turn carried it off to the waiting
freight-car. Fifty men went to work almost immediately; twenty an hour
later in the afternoon; and at nine o’clock that night, under the glare
of the electric lights, ninety-two men were busily engaged in carrying
the fruit and storing it in the freight-cars.
All night long the men worked at a feverish pace. They were organized
so that they formed an endless chain. The first two continuously placed
the fruit upon the third man’s shoulder, and he in turn stepped along
as fast as those ahead of him would allow. When he was relieved of his
bunch of bananas at the car door by two men on the inside who stowed
the fruit away, he would take his place in the line of men returning
for more fruit. Round after round this group of men passed, until in
less than seventeen hours of constant work every banana was taken off
the boat. When we realize that this boat carried nearly ten thousand
tons, we get some idea of the activity of the workers.
I said to one of the men in the line, “How often do you get a job of
this kind?”
“That depends,” he replied. “A banana boat comes in about every three
weeks and then I have about two days’ work.”
“What do you do between times?” I asked.
“Well, not much of anything. Sometimes one thing, sometimes another.
Just kind of live along between the trips of these boats.”
=Millinery and Dresses.= A little girl in Chicago wanted to learn the
millinery business. She easily found a position. It only paid four
dollars a week, but she was learning, so she was willing to begin at
that price. Just before Easter the shop where she worked was crowded
with orders, and she was forced to work from early in the morning
until late at night. When Easter was over she said, “All I know about
making hats is how to sew wire together and line frames.” The girls in
this shop who had been so busy were now thrown out of employment. They
either had to find other employment or else live on what little money
had been saved during the rush time. “I can never get ahead,” said one
of the workers in the shop. “Last year I was able to make just enough
to carry me through the dull season.” What is true of the millinery
trade is also true of some lines of garment trades, especially the
makers of evening gowns. At one period they are rushed to the limit of
their endurance: at another there is nothing to do. Business demands
cannot be regulated perfectly. The clerks in the stores at Christmas
time must expect to do extra work.
=The Vagabond Workers.= One night in Seattle I saw a large group of men
gathered on a street corner and singing at the top of their voices.
The strange chorus was led by a young fellow who was standing on a
soap box. The song he was teaching was mere doggerel; the refrain of
it being “Oh, Mr. Block, you take the cake. You make me ache.” The
leader would pronounce a line, then say, “Now, fellow workingmen, all
sing and sing with all your might. Let us show them what we can do.”
And the motley crowd shouted out the words of the song which told the
story of a poor “blanket stiff”--a fellow who has to carry his blankets
when he goes looking for a job--who got through work in one place, went
into an employment agency to ask for a new job and was told that if he
would put up the money he could get the job. He paid two dollars and
was sent out into the woods. When he got off the train there was no
job in sight. He came back and made his complaint, but nothing could
be done because that was the method by which the employment agency
made its money. He then applied to Samuel Gompers of the Federation
of Labor, but all he got from Gompers was “sympathy.” This man’s name
was “Block,” and to accentuate the significance of the name the leader
would hold up his hand, stop the crowd from singing, and then tapping
on his head would say, “What was his name?” and they would reply
“Block.” “What was it made of?” and they shouted “wood.”
It was amusing to listen to this crowd but in the midst of the
grotesquery of the leader and the raucous howling of the song there
was a moral quality and a spiritual earnestness that even a casual
listener could feel. These men had just come in from the woods. They
were laborers who had been lumbering all through the winter, and now
at the end of the season were thrown on the city with nothing to do.
The Industrial Workers of the World, that revolutionary organization
that was formed in Colorado early in this century, had found a fertile
soil in the minds of these men and had not been slow to sow the seed. I
stood with one of the group and listened. My friend was an elderly man
who had just reached the city from the mines in Alaska. In his youth he
had been a miner in Wales. Said he, “This carries me back to the days
of my boyhood. The Welsh sang as these men do, and the discontent of
the miners in our district gathered headway under the leadership of the
local Methodist preacher. The men sang and from their singing began an
enthusiasm that rolled throughout the whole region in a wave of protest
against the bitter conditions under which we were forced to work. We
got results. If these men keep on singing, some day they are going to
make their message heard.” The main reason for the I. W. W. and similar
organizations is that nothing has been done for the laborer who is at
the bottom of the industrial ladder. He is considered a tramp, pushed
into the out-of-the-way places, forced to do the hardest, most perilous
work, and society forgets him. He is a bum, a tramp, or hobo. No one
has a good word for him. Every effort to improve his condition is
looked upon with disfavor. This little poem expresses the feeling of
many of these men:
“The world is housed, and homed, and wived,
It takes no note as I pass by.
Nobody shared in the life I lived,
Nobody’ll share in the death I die.
“East, west, north, and south I’ve hiked,
Seen more things than I’d care to tell;
Part of the world that I’ve seen I liked--
None of it liked me overwell.
“I cheated once--or twice--in my time,
But the joy of crime I never could see,
So I never went the way of crime--
No pull-and-haul with the cops for me.
“I never was low like the hobo crew,
Though I’ve begged my bread on many a day,
But I always worked when they asked me to,
To pay for a meal or a bed in the hay.”
There has never been any great success in the attempts to organize
the vagabond workers. The membership in the I. W. W. and similar
organizations rises or declines so rapidly that it is almost impossible
to quote any figures that are dependable. Professor Parker reported
the results of a careful study made in California in 1915 and which
showed that there were at that time 4,500 affiliated members in that
state. The membership fluctuates, however, because when trouble arises
in any industry in the West the membership in the I. W. W. always
doubles or trebles. In one strike in Washington the organization
claimed membership of 3,000, but there were about 7,000 on strike.
The organization of these workers and the explosive quality of their
teachings form a real menace to society. The philosophy of the I. W. W.
is expressed in the words of one of the leaders who explained that
according to their code there is no such thing as right or wrong. He
said, “We know what people mean when they discuss these questions but
they have no significance in our lives. The only principle that we
acknowledge is the principle of expediency. It is better not to break
windows because it will get us into trouble with the authorities, but
the abstract principle of breaking windows and destroying property
being wrong makes no appeal to us whatever.” The man who gave utterance
to this statement was formerly a Presbyterian minister. He was in
charge of a church in a steel city and his contact with the workers
gained for him a clear understanding of the poverty and despair that
grow out of their conditions. This vision and the sight of the people
on the other side of the social gulf, who were living most recklessly
in the midst of their luxuries, led him to become one of the leading
radicals in the labor world. The philosophy of the I. W. W., and the
power of this organization are increasing just in proportion as we fail
to correct the abuses that now destroy the lives of men.
=Causes.= In this country we have made little effort to prevent the
consequences which are certain to follow the operation of the law of
supply and demand. We have acted upon the theory that all we need
to do is to allow natural law to have a chance for its operation.
Individualism is praised as being the means of saving the worker. The
result is that there is a shockingly large amount of labor turn-over
each year--that is, each job has two or three men working on it. We
have presented to us also the spectacle of thousands of men who form an
army of migratory laborers. In one part of the United States there will
be a labor shortage and in another there will be a shortage of work to
be done.
If we would know what makes the tramp and the vagabond we must become
acquainted with some man who tramps the highway with his pack on his
back. His wife and his children were left years ago in some Eastern
city when he went out West to find a job. The job which he secured did
not keep him long enough for him to become a resident or even to feel
settled in the community. The place in which he slept and lived was a
bunk-house, dirty, filthy, and filled with vermin; and the food he had
to eat was of such poor quality and so wretchedly cooked that he would
not have eaten it at all except that he was almost famished and it was
all that he could get.
The communities in which this wanderer of the road finds himself have
always been against him. The children in the homes are told that if
they are not good the tramps will get them. He looks upon the law as
being framed especially to cause him inconvenience, and the officers
of the law are his special enemies. The only places that are open to
him are the saloons, the low dives, and the cheap rooming house. The
work he does pays him fairly good wages for a short period; but when
he is paid off, with the money in his pocket, there is nothing for
him to do but to get drunk, and this he proceeds to do; nor does he
sober up until every cent is gone. Then he turns to another job if he
can find one. Of course, if he would save his money and try to live a
decent life he might be able to get on. But as the pastor of a church
in southern Washington said: “Down in my parish, which is in the woods,
I have in the winter-time about 1,500 men to look after. They are a
rough, hard set who have been gathered together through the employment
agencies in Seattle and Tacoma. They believe in nothing and in no one.
They are made victims of every possible tyranny. All that they have is
their job, and their roll of blankets. The bunk-houses in which they
live are so bad that a self-respecting dog would not stay in them. The
food they eat is absolutely rotten. They are treated like cattle, with
the exception that a valuable steer will receive greater protection,
for it is not as easy to get another good working steer as it is to
get another hobo to take the place of the worker that is lost. When
these drifters are paid off the forces that ruin men get hold of them
immediately, and for the next few days they spend their time carousing
and getting drunk. The lumber companies in our community are making
money fast, but they are destroying men, and scattering dynamite all
over the Northwest that threatens to explode in a social upheaval that
will shake the whole western part of the United States.” These are the
words of a sober-minded Presbyterian pastor and one who has no sympathy
for dangerous social doctrines. He is simply speaking out of his heart
and from his experience.
In another district one of the officials of a mining company said in
his annual report: “This last year was one of unprecedented success. We
were able to work continuously and with little difficulty because we
had at all times an average of three men available for each job. This
gave us workers always ready to our hand.” As was said before, the war
changed this situation very largely, and for the time being the old
causes which operated to increase the number of the unemployed have
been removed. There is more work than possibly can be done, and every
worker has his job cut out for him. In a letter I have just received
the writer says, “The war offers the right-minded people of America
the greatest opportunity in history. We can correct ancient wrongs
and right old abuses if we will only put our minds to this task.” But
there are certain considerations that must be taken into account if we
would remove the causes which make for unemployment and discontent that
accompany it. The community’s responsibility for the man out of work
does not end with securing a job for him, nor with the regularizing of
industry, nor in supporting labor exchanges. We are all creatures of
circumstances and influenced strongly by our environment. Therefore,
every community ought to provide adequate means for recreation, and
decent places where men and women can gather under wholesome conditions.
[Illustration: The casual workers are the true servants of humanity.]
=A Man and His Job.= One of the slogans of the French Revolution was
“The right to work.” Man has a proprietary right in his job and it is
the only property that most men possess; when he loses it he is losing
everything. Some years ago the Idaho legislature passed a law which
guarantees to every citizen resident in the state for six months,
ninety days public work a year at ninety per cent. of the usual wage
if married or having a dependent, and seventy-five per cent. of the
usual wage if he is single. Industry has never been organized so as
to include the best interests of the worker. There are hundreds of
thousands more workers needed in the good years than in the bad years.
In every business special calls arise for more workers to be used for
a few weeks or a few days at a time. The reserves of labor necessary
to meet these seasonal or casual demands can be reduced to a minimum,
providing that industry is regularized. As it is, the individual worker
suffers in the machine, or system, that he has helped to create. The
modern plan of organization provides for managers, superintendents,
foremen, clerks, and skilled men--all dependent for their position
upon the group of unskilled men or semi-skilled workers at the bottom.
It is obvious that we cannot legislate so that lumber can be taken out
of the forests all the year round, nor can the casual workers--farm
laborers, fruit-, and hop-pickers and others--have continual
employment. What we can do, however, is to mobilize the labor forces of
the country with the same care and ability that we have mobilized our
national army. Through a chain of labor exchanges extending throughout
the whole nation we can bring the man and the job together. When the
lumber employees in the woods of Washington finish with their season
they could be brought down into California to work on the farms and in
the fields; and then farther down as the fruit ripens, following on
straight through the state. In the autumn they could be brought back
again to take their places in the woods.
Another thing that will be required is a changed attitude toward the
men at work. Just as long as we assume that the workers employed at
these tasks are worthless, just so long will they try to live down to
their reputation. A Methodist minister in Seattle believed that the
average “blanket stiff” had enough good in him to respond to right
treatment. He formed a cooperative company and bought up a number of
mills in the state. He hired a lot of the commonest workers and sent
them out to the woods to work in these mills. Instead of attempting to
make a big profit on the labor of the men, he allowed the men to share
in the management and profits of the concern. The result was that when
all the other mills were having labor troubles he was able to work
right straight along, and where others failed he made a big success.
The reason was that he faced the issues squarely and fairly, and
treated the men as he would himself like to be treated.
=Sin and Inefficiency.= If every individual was normal you could lay
the full responsibility upon him and feel that when he failed it was
perfectly just that he should suffer, and we would not need to worry
about the conditions under which people labor. But sin enters in and
with depravity comes inefficiency. Business cannot be conducted as a
benevolent enterprise. A man or woman’s wage must be earned by the
worker or else it cannot be continued. When a man by drink or other
excesses destroys his efficiency it is impossible for him to maintain
himself in a position that pays a large wage and which offers steady
employment; so he drifts into the ranks of the casual workers. He is
unfit for regular work by temperament and habit; but he is willing to
work for a short time, even though he works extremely hard. In dealing
with the problem of the casual worker then, we have two things to take
into account: First, we must regularize industry as far as possible,
doing away with the extraordinary demands for certain periods that are
always followed by long periods of idleness. In the second place, we
must in some way lay hold of the individual man, and by surrounding him
with the best influences, make it possible for him to live a life of
righteousness and sobriety. In other words, we must reduce the amount
of seasonal work to the minimum and increase the efficiency of the
worker to the maximum.
We should never lose sight of the fact that personal qualities enter
in to complicate this question and make its solution more difficult.
The drunkenness and vice of the individual man keep him in a position
where it is almost impossible for him to be helped or for him to help
himself. The man out of work degenerates. His moral fiber is weakened;
he becomes susceptible to every evil. The process by which many a
criminal has been made was begun in the hour that the man found himself
thrown out of employment. Perhaps it was not his own fault in the first
place, but having once been faced with the grim alternative of seeing
his family suffer or of yielding to some criminal act, he accepted the
latter as the easiest solution of the problem and a way out of his
difficulties.
As long as a person is able to provide the necessities of life and to
keep himself and his family in a fair degree of efficiency through the
use of an adequate amount of food, shelter, and clothing, the chances
are that he will develop a new and stronger interest in the things that
have to do with the moral and social side of his life. On the other
hand, when the means of livelihood are taken away, and a man finds
himself denied the opportunity of work--which means that the things
that are necessary to satisfy the most fundamental needs of himself
and his family cannot be secured--the moral effect on this man, his
family, and society can hardly be exaggerated. The whole structure of
our life is dependent upon and presupposes regularity of employment.
Not only does the fact of being out of a job cut off a man’s means
of livelihood, but the psychological effect of being forced to live
without working, taken together with the breaking of habits acquired by
years of industry, puts a severe strain on the standards of morality
which have been built up by long and painful processes. The unemployed
man may react in one of two ways: he will become an anarchist and spend
himself in fighting the system under whose injustice he suffers, or he
will give up the struggle and become a drifter upon the tides of life,
a social outcast.
=The Jungle.= The best thing in Upton Sinclair’s story of the
conditions in the stock-yards in Chicago is the little picture he gives
of the man who finally in despair gave up the struggle for a living,
got on a train, and went out as far west as the train would carry him.
When he left the railroad track he wandered into a field and lay down
beside a stream. Feeling hungry after a while he arose and went to a
near-by house and asked for something to eat. This was the first time
he had ever begged but the woman at the door was considerate of him and
he got his food. Then he returned and lay down again in the rich grass
and went to sleep. When he awoke he took off his clothes and had a bath
in the creek, then getting out of the water he dressed himself and
again lay down; put his hands behind his head and looked up into the
blue sky. All of a sudden it occurred to him that he was now getting
more out of life than he ever had before. He had worked and worried and
all he ever got was just barely enough to eat. Now he had all he wanted
to eat, a good place to lie and dream, the pure air of heaven fanning
his face, the blue sky over his head, and no work to do. “Why should a
man work, anyway? What’s the use?” he said. This philosophy made him a
tramp.
Unemployment must be recognized as an evil in and of itself. For the
man out of work meals and lodging should be secured. The church has
done much in this regard. The soup-kitchens have been so much an
adjunct of so many churches that some of our evangelists have come to
refer to the soup-kitchen type of Christianity as being a recognized
type. The church knows the methods for charity and relief. We must go
further than this. The church’s program for the casual laborer should
include the education of the community regarding the necessity of
regularized industry, bringing it about so that, for instance, hats
will be made not only when hats are needed but ahead of time. And, too,
there should be public exchanges for employment covering the country
and a systematized distribution of public work.
The forming of a comprehensive plan for unemployment insurance is
another step forward. Other countries have found this kind of insurance
a wise provision. Insurance against every form of disaster is common.
We insure a perfect day for a parade. We insure the ships and their
cargoes. We insure our lives. Why not insure men against the greatest
of all disasters that can befall them, the loss of their jobs? We
need not worry about the probability that unemployment insurance is
likely to take away the initiative of the men. The danger of moral
deterioration in such a case is much less than that which actually
grows out of the periods of unemployment.
The church is involved in the whole situation. The men dependent on
their wages for a living find their means of livelihood cut off and
they naturally turn to the church. A year before the war broke out the
unemployed in several cities marched into the churches and demanded
help. Some of the churches felt that they were being encroached upon.
A committee in one church forced the janitor to sweep the entire
building with a solution of formaldehyde, for, as the chairman of
the committee said, “You never know what diseases these dreadful
people have.” It is undoubtedly true that the churches are always
expected to do more than it is possible for them to do. At the same
time the unemployed man has the right to feel that if the church is
a fundamental institution for the salvation of individuals, for the
remaking of society, and the reconstruction of industrial life, it
cannot evade the issue nor fail to shoulder its responsibility. To open
the church as a sleeping place and to feed the hungry is not enough.
=The War and the Future.= The world war has brought us face to face
with a new task. The United States and Canada are at present the
producing nations of the world. The Anti-Loafer laws now being carried
through are cleaning out the cabarets, the poolrooms, the theaters,
and other places where idle men congregate. It will be years before
we are faced with the same serious situation that has faced us in
the past. However, when our huge armies are demobilized and “Johnny
comes marching home,” there will be a new problem which will have to
be considered. How can these men be fitted back into industrial life
without increasing the number of unskilled and semi-skilled workers
to such a degree that we will again be faced with a huge army of
unemployed?
In periods of unemployment it is the common laborer who suffers most.
We have failed to realize this. And yet he makes a big contribution
to all progress. You cannot build a bridge without him and, in fact,
he is used in every enterprise. Because of his lack of skill, and
also because of his too common habits of living, we call these men
tramps and hobos, and refer to them in the mass as common laborers.
As a matter of fact no man who does any work is a common man. They
are ignorant for the most part; vicious in many cases; some are lazy,
drunken, shiftless--all of these things; but at the same time they are
the men who are cutting down the trees, sawing up the logs, forming
them into rafts, floating them down the river, and putting them through
the mills. They are the men who are loading the ships at our docks, the
men who pick hops and work in the harvest fields; pick the fruit and
do the thousand other things that have to be done when the season is
right. Besides these, there are the thousands of women who are driven
at top speed at certain periods of the year through the unusual demands
of industry, and then are thrown out of employment for long periods.
Ignorant, unknown, friendless, and made the victims of industrial
conditions over which they have no control, they seem of so little
importance in the vast system--as merely the lesser cogs in the lesser
wheels--that very few know of their existence except when something
goes wrong with the cogs, and the whole machine is shut down because of
the break. But without them the machine could not run at all.
The casual workers are the true servants of humanity, and yet they are
the ones that are passed by unnoticed; the ones that rarely if ever are
influenced by the church. They constitute a great army of neglected men
and women, a challenge to the church, a menace to society, and a danger
to our commonwealth; and all because they are neglected and unknown.
CHAPTER X
THE WORLD OF INDUSTRIAL WOMEN
Any one who reads history with his eyes open will be impressed with the
fact that this world has always been considered a man’s world. At one
period woman was denied every right; she was the slave of man. Rome
and Greece treated her as a child. Medieval ages found her working in
the fields and supporting large families, while her husband and son
fought for rights that could never be hers. The familiar figure of a
woman and an ox yoked together and driven by a man well represents the
spirit of the past. The Hebrew rabbis made many proverbs relating to
woman’s condition: “When Jehovah was angry, he made woman.” “Woman is
an afterthought of God.” “A man of straw is worth more than a woman of
gold.” The statement has been made and repeated times out of number
that woman’s sphere is the home. This statement is true, but not
unqualifiedly so; in fact, home is no more a woman’s place than it is a
man’s. Home is based upon mutual responsibility, consideration, and the
willingness to share mutual burdens. There is no sense in the old saw,
“Woman should leave her home but three times--when she is christened,
when she is married, and when she is buried.” This is on a par with
another old proverb: “Woman, the cat, and the chimney should never
leave the house.” We have outlived these archaic notions, and to-day,
while we recognize as never before that home is woman’s true sphere, we
realize that home is the man’s true sphere also.
The home is the foundation-stone of our civilization. It is the
strength and safety of society. Rome fell when her homes were
destroyed. Public morals are gaged by the morals of the home. In the
face of the divorce court, with its incessant grind of business, it
is time to raise a voice of protest against the spirit of careless
indifference which views the home as a mere boarding-house, and “a
place to stay away from.” Who is the chief offender, man or woman?
The woman’s club, the woman’s place in politics, woman’s interest in
industry and in reform have all been cited as being the potent forces
at work destroying the home. As a matter of fact it is the man who is
chiefly responsible. The strength, the vigor, and the purity of the
American home, which show to-day in the splendid type of soldiers that
are being sent across the seas to fight in the battle for democracy,
speak well for the work of woman. The average man knows where he lives,
the number of the house, and the name of the street on which it stands.
He is able to recognize his children usually when he meets them. He
pays the bills and takes a general interest in the appearance and
up-keep of the establishment; but when it comes to bearing his share of
the heavy burdens, he is a poor partner in the concern. The wife and
mother is the home-maker. We know how well she has done her part.
=Woman and Necessity.= Women have chosen their work because of
necessity as well as because of opportunity. A mother of two boys
was left a widow with no money. Her people were all poor. If she went
back home, the added burden would be an injustice to her parents and
would work hardship upon her brothers and sisters. She had too much
self-respect to take this course. She knew little about business and
had no trade, but she found work in a store and by hard study at night
and close application became an expert saleswoman. She sent her boys
through college. One of them to-day is a successful lawyer and has
served as senator in the state legislature. The other is a practising
physician in one of the large cities of the Middle West. Both of these
men are eminently successful. This woman contributed more than her
share to society and was cheerful and happy in her work. In speaking of
her one of the partners in the firm where she was employed said, “There
is no person connected with this firm who has created such a wholesome
atmosphere as she has done.”
A little black-eyed boy was arrested in the north end of Boston and
sent to the reform school. He was eleven years old and had become the
leader of a gang of boys who had been robbing show-windows. His mother
was a Jewess; his father had deserted her and left three children, one
just a baby in arms. This woman could find nothing to do that would
pay her enough to enable her to provide actual necessities for her
children. The baby died and in the distress of the hour the mother
appealed to a neighbor. She helped her financially and found a position
for her in one of the millinery shops of the city. This woman, in
reality a widow, had been able to struggle along but was not very
capable. She fought her battle as bravely as she could and was always
cheerful, but it was almost too much for her to do the earning that was
necessary. Her little boy, without proper guardianship, with no place
to play but the streets, got into trouble. It was not only because the
mother was at work and thus unable to train her boy, that this new
trouble came, but because there is no proper and adequate provision
made for women left in her position.
The woman of the family is always the most overburdened member. She
has serious responsibilities and the heaviest tasks. When she is left
with the care of children, it is inevitable that she should turn to
industry for her own and her children’s support. Another group of
workers are the young girls who go into work for a few years until they
are married. Still another are the young women who feel that there is
no reason why women should not have the same chance to make a place
for themselves in the world of industry that is accorded to men. We
must come to believe in the independence of both men and women and
grant to each the right to choose his or her own place and work in
life. A newspaper woman in Cincinnati said: “I determined that I had
qualifications necessary for success as a writer. I went to school and
studied hard with the intention of becoming a reporter. When I received
my diploma, I was as proud as any member of the class, but not half
as happy on that day as I was a week later when I received my first
assignment from the city editor of a paper that had employed me ‘on
trial.’ I have succeeded and am happy in my work.” Why should any one
attempt to limit this woman in her vocation? She has chosen and chosen
well. She is making her contribution and it is just as important as
that made by thousands of the best men in similar positions.
=In War Time.= Since the war began nearly a million and a quarter
additional women have been brought into the industries of Great
Britain. This is an increase of nearly forty per cent. of the number
employed in July, 1914. Moreover, the percentage of the increase is
rising. In France we find the same situation. In the United States
as the war goes on larger numbers of women are taking places as
wage-earners. Women are replacing men in running elevators in all
public buildings, working in hotels, as conductors on street-car lines,
guards on subway trains, ticket sellers, baggage agents, and crossing
tenders in the railroad service. Thousands more are going into the
different forms of agricultural work. Besides these new pursuits, women
are running the lathes in the shops and factories, while thousands are
employed in the making of munitions. Probably it is safe to say that
for every man who has gone to the front at the present time there is a
woman in America who is doing the man’s work.
A study of the conditions shows that nearly all the work done by women
in the warring nations is unskilled or semi-skilled. There are not very
many opportunities for advancement and most of the women feel that
they are simply working in an emergency; hence there is not a chance
of their becoming efficient as skilled workers. The ability of these
workers is remarkable, especially when we take into consideration
the fact that most of the women had no training before the war. In
the working of automatic machines where technical skill is of less
value than carefulness, attention, and dexterity, women are much
more efficient than men. In a report made upon the conditions in the
employment of women in Great Britain during the war, is this statement
concerning the efficiency of women: “In regularity, application,
accuracy, and finish women have proved very satisfactory.”
=Quality of Work.= In the work that women are able to do, they learn
quickly, more so than the men employed in the same places; and they
increase the output above what was usual with the men workers. The
experience in the United States in pre-war times proves the efficiency
of the women workers. The treasury department employs women for the
detecting of counterfeits in paper money. After a bad bill has gone
through half a dozen banks, and has been subjected to the closest
scrutiny, and yet has not been detected, these experienced women can
detect it by its “feel.” According to statistics color-blindness is
much more prominent in men than in women. A noted educator is authority
for the statement that in the public schools four per cent. of all the
boys are color-blind, while only one tenth of one per cent. of the
girls are color-blind. It is now generally conceded that the sight is
the most intelligent of all the senses. The average woman, no matter
what she undertakes, will work harder to make herself proficient
than will the average man. One result of so many women entering into
industry is to raise the grade of employment and make the workers more
competent. It may not seem that this would be the result at first, but
that rather the reverse would be true. It was the entering of women
into the ranks of the physicians that changed the meager ten or eleven
months’ course of the medical college into the four years’ course that
is required to-day.
There never has been a time when women were not in industry. When the
loom left the home, women followed it into the factory. More than eight
million women and girls were employed in gainful occupations outside
the home in the United States just before the war began. This number
has been increased, yet it is not out of proportion to the number of
women in the country. It is logical that women should continue in
industry. A woman must live, and for her living a certain amount of
money is required. This money must be given to her or she must earn it;
not only that, but the women of to-day will demand the right to do some
constructive work in the midst of the new conditions under which we
live.
=The Field of Women’s Activity.= Certain vocations are closed to women.
All those occupations which demand great physical strength belong of
right to man. The heavy work in the steel-mills, much of the work in
constructural iron trades, wood-work, bridge-building, stone masonry,
heavy carpentry, mining, smelting, refining minerals, and the heavy
work of shoveling and lifting are men’s tasks. Many of the trades are
also closed to women, because in these trades it takes at least five
years’ apprenticeship before a man is able to earn a salary. Women do
not care to enter into such a long apprenticeship. They will not give
five years to non-productive work, for the great majority of women
have not accepted industrial work in preference to married life. If
the right man comes along, the average woman would feel that as a
home-maker cooperating with her husband she could accomplish more than
by continuing alone as an industrial unit. Of this attitude Miss Alice
Henry says, “Give her fairer wages, shorten her hours of toil, let her
have a chance of a good time, of a happy girlhood, and an independent,
normal woman will be free to make a real choice of the best man. She
will not be tempted to accept passively any man who offers himself,
just in order to escape from a life of unbearable toil, monotony, and
deprivation.”[4]
[4] Alice Henry, _The Trade Union Woman_.
[Illustration:
Press Illustrating Service.
In the army of laborers the girl and the woman are drafted as well as
the boy and the man.]
=A Woman’s Chances in a Man’s World.= Woman is an organic part
of society. This means that she is a part of every one of the
organizations that enter into modern society. She has always had a
part in literature. Julia Ward Howe in writing the “Battle Hymn of
the Republic,” contributed not only to our wealth of song, but made a
direct contribution toward the winning of the freedom of the slaves.
Harriet Beecher Stowe also gave her remarkable aid to the same cause.
George Eliot was one of the great novelists. In the field of reform
Frances E. Willard takes first place. Maud Ballington Booth, the
“little mother” of thousands of prisoners, is making a new world for
the men into which they may enter when they leave the penitentiary
door. It is the Pilgrim mothers rather than the Pilgrim fathers who
ought to be given the credit for New England’s contribution to national
history. All other attempts to colonize failed because the adventurers
in their quest for gold and fortunes did not bring their women with
them. Anna the prophetess of old in the temple and Susan B. Anthony in
the suffrage cause each represent an age and an enthusiasm and an
ability to persist until results are achieved.
Now we have a new situation. Many people view with concern the
increasing numbers of women that are employed in gainful occupations
in the United States and Canada at the present time. The employment of
women presents not one question but many. The problem that is familiar
to nearly all housekeepers--that of securing domestic service--presses
upon our attention the number of women employed in this kind of work.
Domestic service engages the largest number of women outside of the
home. Women are now doing everything that men have done, and in most
cases are doing the work just as well, while in many occupations they
show an efficiency that men have never achieved. Charles Kingsley’s
phrase, “For men must work and women must weep,” did very well in
that age, but under the economic conditions under which we are living
to-day, the contrast he makes is absolutely inappropriate. The question
of work and workers has been settled. In the army of laborers the girl
and the woman are drafted as well as the boy and man.
Before the great war began there was in the United States about
one woman worker for every five men. This number has been greatly
increased. Of the three hundred specific occupations the census of
1900 enumerated there were only two occupations in which women were
not engaged in some capacity. The census of 1910 gives a larger number
of occupations, and not one in which women are not employed. Women are
on the street-car lines and are line women and telegraphers, riveters,
blacksmiths, steam-boiler makers, brass workers, and foundry workers.
In fact, no work seems too hard or too heavy for some woman to make
a success of it. From the time of the invention of the cotton-gin,
which brought more women into the world of industry than any other one
machine, to the present day we have the story of women and men gaining
larger visions, receiving better wages, and together making the world a
more habitable place for us all.
=Justice to Women Workers.= It would be impossible for us to manage
business as we do to-day without the efficient help of secretaries,
stenographers, telegraph-operators, and other office assistants, nearly
all of whom are women. The question arises as to what treatment a woman
should receive. For some reason, when a woman does a piece of work, no
matter how well it is done, or howsoever efficient she becomes, we have
a feeling that she should receive less pay for the same work than a man
would receive. There are many reasons why women are suffering from this
injustice. One arises from the conditions which bring a large number of
women into industry.
A number of salesgirls, some stenographers, and a great many helpers
in different industrial firms live at home and work for what is known
as pin-money. They are not primarily dependent upon their wage. The
money comes in handy and they can use it to good advantage. They are
not forced to work, hence, they can and will accept a lower wage than
if they were absolutely dependent upon what they earn. “I receive $3.50
a week for clerking in this store,” said a bright girl in Chicago, “and
I don’t take anything from the floor-walkers. Whenever they try to
order me around, they have got another guess coming. I don’t have to
work, and I let them know it. They are mighty lucky to get me.” This
was all right for this girl, but the fact that she was situated so that
a salary of $3.50 a week satisfied her made it possible for the firm
to set that as a standard wage, and other girls who did have to take
bossing from the floor-walkers, and were dependent upon their wages,
were forced to accept what the firm offered. A friend of mine who has
an interest in a dry-goods store holds that the average girl is not
worth more than $6 a week because she works simply to tide her over
a few years until she gets married. He said, “I cannot afford to pay
more than $6 because my competitors pay this same rate to their clerks;
and if I am going to sell goods I have to take into consideration the
conditions in the trade.”
Another thing that enters into the situation is the fact that women
workers have never been as well organized as men. The points upon which
the trade-union movement concentrates are the raising of wages, the
shortening of hours, the diminution of seasonal work, the regulation
of piece-work (with its resultant speeding up), the maintaining of
sanitary conditions, the guarding of unsafe machinery, the making of
laws against child labor which can be enforced, the abolition of taxes
for power and for working materials (such as thread and needles),
and of unfair fines for petty or unproved offenses. Miss Henry tells
of a case in a non-union trade which suggests the reasons which make
organization a necessity. “Twenty-one years ago in the bag and hemp
factories of St. Louis, girl experts turned out 460 yards of material
in a twelve-hour day, the pay being 24 cents per bolt, measuring from
60 to 66 yards. These girls earned $1.84 per day. Four years ago a girl
could not hold her job under 1,000 yards in a ten-hour day. The fastest
possible worker can turn out only 1,200 yards, and the price has
dropped to 15 cents a hundred yards. The old rate of 24 cents per bolt
used to net $1.80 to a very quick worker. The new rate to one equally
competent is but $1.50.
“The workers have to fill a shuttle every minute and a half or two
minutes. This necessitates the strain of constant vigilance, as
the breaking of the thread causes unevenness, and for this mishap
operators are laid off for two or three days. The operators are at
such a tension that they not only stand all day, but may not even bend
their knees. The air is thick with lint which the workers inhale. The
throat and eyes are terribly affected, and it is necessary to work
with the head bound up, and to comb the lint from the eyebrows. The
proprietors have to retain a physician to attend the workers every
morning, and medicine is supplied free, as an accepted need for every
one so engaged. One year is spent in learning the trade; and the girls
last at it only from three to four years afterward. Some of them enter
marriage, but many of them are thrown on the human waste-heap. One
company employs nearly 1,000 women, so that a large number are affected
by these vile, inhuman conditions. The girls in the trade are mostly
Slovaks, Poles, and Bohemians, who have not been long in America. In
their inexperience they count $1.50 as good wages, although gained
at ever so great a physical cost.”[5] These wretched conditions are
not uncommon. Thousands of women who are forced to earn their living
and are contributing their full share toward making America the great
commercial power she is to-day are laboring under just such injustice.
[5] Alice Henry, _The Trade Union Woman_.
=Women and Unions.= Most of the union leaders have viewed with alarm
the increasing number of women that are being drafted into industry
each year. The reasons for this are clear to all who know the history
of trade unionism and know how the workmen greet the coming into
industry of any new group of available workers. The war has made
labor conditions chaotic; and the shortage in certain lines has given
opportunity for the employers to substitute women for men, because
women for the most part are economically defenseless and, therefore,
can be secured for a lower wage than men. Women are more easily
exploited than men because they have not been so long in the industrial
struggle with its keen competition. They are less able to appreciate
the value of cooperation for mutual protection. One union leader said,
“I look upon the large number of women who are being drafted into
industry as a real menace to the women themselves, to society, and to
labor.” The situation presents itself something like this: Organized
labor has a very close relation in its feeling to all labor and to
all the different groups of workingmen organized and unorganized; and
it regards an injustice to an unorganized worker as being indirectly
an injustice to itself. The reason for this sympathy is of course
primarily selfish, for the union man knows that if his fellow laborers
in another trade are unprotected, and an injustice is practised upon
them, it will be only a short time until the same thing will be
attempted upon the organized worker. If women go into competition with
men under present conditions they will be employed rather than men
because they can be secured for a lower wage. Look, for instance, at
some of the cotton-mills in the South, where the whole family, father,
mother, and two or three children all work, and the total wage of the
family group amounts to just about what is considered a living wage.
The attitude of organized labor toward women workers is about the
same as its attitude toward cheap foreign labor, and the reason for
the feeling is due wholly to the fear that the women brought into the
industry will lower wages and bring down the standard of living of the
entire group. The attitude is dictated as a defense measure in behalf
of the standard of living for all. The attitude of union labor is
indefensible except as a measure of self-defense. It should be said,
however, that union labor is not a unit in this attitude. There are a
large number of broad-minded men in the ranks of the organized workers
who recognize present conditions, and see that it is inevitable that
larger numbers of women shall be employed in gainful occupations in the
future. Instead of putting up the bars and attempting to keep women
out, those who have given the matter most thought are putting forth
their efforts to organize the workers. The Women’s National Trade Union
League, of which Mrs. Raymond Robbins is the president, has rendered
great service for the women workers of the nation. Legislation has
been secured and minimum wages established in some places. But best of
all this movement has been teaching the women workers the necessity
of organization in order that they and other women may be protected,
and that the women drafted into industry may not become a menace to
the American standard of living which has been built up at such great
pains and through such toilsome efforts. This league voices the protest
of American working women against the notoriously bad conditions
surrounding the work of women and children.
Women have always been taken into some of the men’s unions, but the
growth of certain trades--such as glove-making, coat- and suit-making,
shirt, collar, and shirt-waist manufacturing--employing women almost
exclusively made such cooperation impossible. These trades were
organized after much effort on the part of the leaders of the Women’s
National Trade Union League. This organization has conducted several
strikes in big cities in the last ten years, and in nearly every case
has won. Girls strike just as hard as men. They have more persistence;
are more willing to sacrifice and suffer and generally show more
intelligence in conducting their affairs. They make good pickets
and because of their aggressive, earnest work are successful. Their
resources are not so great and when they are out of work they have more
difficulty in getting temporary jobs. Another important feature of
their problems is that the supply of non-union workers to take their
places is almost unlimited.
=Women and the Church.= Women in all the Christian ages have recognized
the church as their friend and in appreciation of what it has done they
have worked unceasingly for its success. There is a big task before
the church in behalf of women, and especially in the interests of the
women laborers in industry. There is the opportunity for the church
groups to influence the individual employer to improve conditions
pending regulation by the community. In addition to the question of
wages and hours the demands of the churches must involve the abolition
of the speeding-up process by which, under the piece-work system, the
amount of work required for a specified task is constantly increased.
The fastest worker is used as the pace-maker, so that the wage of the
slower worker continually drops, and the amount of work done by the
fastest workers continually increases. The law may specify a minimum
wage, but it cannot specify the amount of work to be done in each
particular trade.
Here is where the church groups must cooperate with the working women
themselves, and must assist them to secure some voice in determining
the conditions under which they shall work. Legislation alone can never
achieve the standards now demanded in common by the church and social
workers; nor can they be realized by the benevolence of employers.
If the health and morals of the community are not to suffer from the
employment of women in industry, it can be accomplished only by the
cooperation of working women to this end. The church must educate
its community to think in terms of the greatest good to the greatest
number. And this means that we must come to realize more than ever
that the strength of the childhood of the nation is dependent upon
the home; and that the strength of the home is dependent upon the
physical, intellectual, and moral welfare of the women of the nation.
It is possible for the church to accomplish much by arousing purchasers
to the necessity of using their conscience in their shopping. Local
white-lists of stores and factories which meet the Consumers’ League
conditions can be made by representative groups. The Consumers’ League
label and the labels of the organizations affiliated in the Women’s
Trade Union League should be demanded. They will protect the conscience
of the buyer and assure him that his comfort is not being secured at
the cost of strain upon the health and morals of the women of his city
or nation. It is for the churches to make this fight for the working
women a community issue. It is a religious issue, and the pulpit may
help to realize these religious values in the lives of the working
women.
When we pray “God save the people,” it would be well for us to use our
heads in our prayers, and to remember that the people will perish if we
do not protect the womanhood which is the foundation of the home. God
cannot save the people if we destroy the mothers of men.
CHAPTER XI
THE WORLD OF THE CHILD WORKERS
“No, we can’t go to school, much as we’d like to. You see, school holds
only a few weeks each year and we have to help with the tobacco.”
This was the reply of a twelve-year-old girl to a question regarding
her school work. She also informed the visitor that helping with the
tobacco meant doing everything that was necessary to be done from the
time the plants are set out until the leaves are finally cured. While
the conversation was going on, this girl’s eight-year-old sister came
out of the barn, and the visitor said:
“Do you help with the tobacco, too?”
“Yep,” was her reply, “I jest now been out wormin’ it.”
When asked what she meant by that she was utterly amazed that any one
could be so ignorant as not to know that tobacco had to be wormed. To
display her efficiency, she showed a tomato-can nearly full of worms
that she had just brought in from the tobacco-field. To prove the
quality of her catch, she held up a nice fat one and even offered to
let the visitor take it if he so desired.
The Burley tobacco is made into plugs for chewing and is used in pipes.
It is grown very extensively in central Kentucky. It was on one of
these tobacco farms that this conversation took place. The worm that
infests the plant looks like a caterpillar with a smooth skin. A small
boy described it as a “bald-headed caterpillar.” It has huge eyes and
is twice the size of the woolly caterpillar. These creatures crawl
all over the plants, and, because of their size and their voracious
appetite, unless they are closely looked after, soon destroy all the
leaves. The plants cannot be sprayed with poison for obvious reasons.
The only prevention is to have the worms picked off by hand. This work
falls to the lot of the boys and girls in the district. It is not a
very congenial task, and it is hard work for the children stooping and
raising the leaves as they toil all day in the burning sun. The little
girls wore their sunbonnets tied under their chins but pushed back on
their necks. They were barefooted and carried a tin can in one hand to
hold the worms. They followed down each row peering under the leaves
and picking off the worms. “Wormin’ time” came just at the period when
they ought to have been in school, but the tobacco had to be saved.
=The Beet-Fields.= There is a settlement of Russians near Billings,
Montana. The fathers, mothers, and all the children work in the
beet-fields. The work commences early in the spring when the beets have
to be thinned out. Apparently no child is too young to pull beets. I
saw boys in the beet-fields hoeing and the hoe-handle was almost as big
as their little bare legs. When the crop is ready to harvest, the dirt
is loosened about the beets and then they are pulled out by hand. The
dirt is knocked off the roots and they are thrown to one side so that
when a row of beets has been pulled they look like hay in a windrow.
This work is heavy and hard, for a beet will average from seven to
eight pounds, and by the time a person has lifted them all day long
from five in the morning to seven at night, he has lifted several tons.
After the beets are laid in rows they have to be topped with a strong,
broad-bladed knife with a hook at the end. The beet is held against
the knee of the worker, and with one stroke of the knife the top is
severed from the root. In the beet-fields the beauties of nature are
reduced to a dull round of production. According to a report made by
the National Labor Committee there are five thousand children working
in the beet-fields. “Money and not children is evidently the chief
concern of these families” is the testimony given in the report made
by Miss Ruth McIntire. She says: “An eleven-year-old girl was found,
who with her sister aged seven, was kept out of school to work in the
beet-field, although her family boasted that they had made ten thousand
dollars last year from their farm. A certain parent declared to a
school principal that his boy was worth $1,000 for work during the beet
season. If he went to school he was nothing but an expense.”[6]
[6] “Children in Agriculture,” by Ruth McIntire, a pamphlet
published by the National Child Labor Committee.
=Mills, Factories, and Workshops.= With the development of the
cotton-mill there was opened up a wide field for the exploitation of
childhood. The spools full of thread have to be put on the machine and
the empty spools removed. Boys and girls of six and eight years can do
this work even better than a grown man or woman. One worker in a mill
can take care of several machines, and if there is a child to care for
the spools the machines can be run very economically, and the profits
will be large. Children are used in works and on the breakers in the
coal-mines. In one of the silver-mills in the Cœur d’Alene mining
district boys stand on the platform alongside the incline down which
the ore rushes in a ceaseless stream going into the breakers. As it
passes down their quick eyes detect the rocks, and especially the hard
round stones that get mixed up with ore. These they pick out and throw
to one side. This is a boy’s job. He can do it better than a man. Thus
all modern processes of industry seem to be at work to make easy the
utilization of the immature and the unskilled.
=Why Child Labor.= Because the machine produces so much it is possible
to pay the child worker a wage that seems large in comparison to what
a man would receive. The father of a boy who worked in one of the
cotton-mills said, “I can make a dollar and seventy-five cents a day;
but my nine-year-old kid makes anywhere from eighty cents to one dollar
a day.” The quick returns from child labor appeal to the selfishness
of the manufacturer as well as to the greed of the father and mother.
It is not good business to have a man do anything that a machine can
do; nor is it good business to put a man to work on a job that a
boy can do just as well as a man. This is the dictate of business.
Children are an expense, and with the increased cost of living there is
always a temptation to utilize the children in the family as economic
assets. “I have three children,” said a father in an Indiana town,
“and all of them are working. We are about as happy a family as you
want to find anywhere. Every month we are able to put a tidy sum in
the savings-bank. Every member of the family is doing his or her
full share. But now on the other hand, my brother has four children
and not one of them is earning a cent. The oldest girl had to have a
college education and that is just a drain on the family. Poor George
has never known a moment’s ease or peace all of his life, what with an
extravagant wife and four children eating their heads off!”
“Children are a blessing from the Lord,” says an old writer. But the
modern interpretation is that they are industrial units that can be
utilized to advantage. Another reason for child labor, however, is
found in the stress of poverty. Here is the story told by another
father: “I love my children just as much as anybody in the city and
I would like to see them have a good time. Joe is selling papers on
the street, May working as cash-girl in a dry-goods store, Frankie
clerking in a five-and-ten-cent store, and William working in a pencil
factory--but not just because I do not care to provide for them. You
see it is this way. My folks were poor and there were nine of us
children. When I was eight years old I had to go to work. To begin with
I got good wages for a boy, and until I was eighteen or nineteen years
old I got along all right. Just about that time other fellows came in
that had more than twelve dollars a week. I began at six dollars. Now I
am nearly fifty, and am already considered an old man, and I am getting
forty dollars a month. How can I support my children and give them
an education such as they ought to have?” This indicates the vicious
circle that is formed between poverty and childhood. Poverty forces
children into industry. They help out for the time being but it is not
very long before they have used up all their initiative, and have gone
just as far as they can go; and as they grow older their wages are
reduced, and in turn their children have to go into the mills to help
them out.
=Poverty and the Cost of Living.= Poverty is the chief enemy of
humanity. It is the parent of nearly all of our ills. This is the
demon that drives bad bargains. For the present the high wages that
are being paid for labor everywhere has done away with a great deal of
poverty; but even yet wages have not been advanced in proportion to
the increased cost of living. Last fall in Scranton a gentleman whom I
met was bitterly complaining of the high price of coal. “If it is so
high now what in the world will the poor people of the city do when the
cold weather really comes?” Scranton is built on the largest anthracite
coal deposit in the world. It is said that in some places the vein is
seventy-five feet thick. It is estimated that at the present rate of
production the supply will last for one hundred years. If, therefore,
the poor people of Scranton suffer for lack of coal what about the
people in other places? We learned last winter how essential coal is to
the life of the people. Combinations all tend to keep the prices high;
our foodstuffs, our fuel, our clothes are high, not because of the law
of supply and demand, for we have learned how to circumvent that law,
but we are all “jobbed by the jobbers.”
Cold storage enables vast quantities of goods to be brought together
and kept for a rise in the market. James E. Wetz, the so-called
egg-king of Chicago, boasted early last winter that he had six million
dozen eggs in storage, and in defiance of the Federal Prosecutor said,
“All the investigation, legislative or otherwise, will not bring the
price of eggs down this year. This is a broker’s year and as for me I
am going to sit tight, watch the prices climb up, and the public can
pay. Nobody can do anything to me.” In the French Revolution the queen
appealed to one of the superintendents of finance and urged him to
bring about a change, for the people were starving. He was obdurate,
however, and in despair she said to him, “What will the people eat?”
The contemptuous statement of the French official was, “Let the people
eat grass.” With the increased cost of living, and the manipulation
of the market so as to keep prices always above a certain level, the
present rise in wages is not as great as under ordinary circumstances.
As long as there is poverty there will always be a strong incentive for
the piratical industrial agent and the greedy conscienceless father to
join hands in exploiting childhood.
=Effect of Child Labor.= The children of the nations at war have been
called the second line of national defense. The men in the front line
are the soldiers and the children growing up will take their places. If
the childhood of the nations at war is destroyed, there is no chance
for men to take the places of the ones who fall at the front. It is
perfectly clear then that in times of war the nations are dependent
upon the growing boys. If, however, the children in times of war form
the second line of defense, in times of peace they form the first line
of defense. The future of a nation is in the hands of the boys and
girls of the present generation. They are the men and women that will
take the places of the business men, the workers in the factories and
workshops, and the tillers of the soil. They must become the future
people who will be responsible for transportation, producers of the
raw materials of civilization, and those who with cunning hands and
ingenious brains work these raw materials into finished fabrics that go
to make up the wonders of civilization and of the age. We are robbing
the nation when we set children to work and make producers out of them.
=Physical Evils.= The effects of child labor are so bad and so well
known that there is no need of entering into a formal discussion of
the question. I taught a class of boys in a settlement in Chicago some
years ago. One of the little fellows had hands that were as black as a
Negro’s, and he always held his hand in a certain position. One night
after class I asked him to wait for a few minutes. I said, “Just a
minute, Fred. I notice that you always hold your hand in a peculiar
way.” “Gee, it is the only way I can hold it,” he replied. Then he
showed me that his fingers were all pressed out of shape and that the
black stain was ink that had been ground into his hand and into his
very flesh. This boy looked to be about twelve years old but he was
nearly nineteen. For almost nine years he had been working in a box
factory. His job was to stencil the ends of boxes. He would lay the
stencil on the wooden end of the boxes, then hold a brush resembling a
shaving brush in his hand and this he would dip into the pot of black
and rub it across the stencil. This constant work for ten hours a day
for nine years had blackened his hands so that they would never be
white again; and the constant pressure from the brush had deformed his
right hand so that it was good for nothing else than to hold a stencil
brush.
Nearly all the unemployable men who gather in our cities, who sleep on
the park benches in good weather, eat wherever they can, and in cold
weather fill up the municipal lodging houses or sleep upon the floors
of the police stations, are physically unfit because they were forced
to go to work at too early an age. The number of these men who are the
victims of child labor is remarkable. A student of social conditions,
who made a study of the problem of unemployment in this country in the
winter of 1913-14 said, “We are coming to see the rank folly of putting
children in at one end of the industrial hopper, grinding them up,
and taking inefficient, no-account men out at the other end. We have
thousands of children in the country doing work that they ought not
to do, and hundreds of thousands of men who can get nothing to do. We
are not only faced with the problem to-day, but we are projecting the
problem into to-morrow.”
An accurate study of the life of the cotton-mill operators shows that
the death-rate is so high that the inference is justified that work
in the mill has an unfortunate influence upon those who follow it.
Approximately half of the deaths of the operatives between fifteen and
forty-five years of age are due to tuberculosis. Some years ago a book
was published in defense of child labor in the South. The contention
was that the workers in the cotton-mill were the most healthful of any
people in the community. A report made by the United States government
on the conditions in the mills shows that beyond any doubt the mill
is a hazardous place for an adult, to say nothing of the child. In
Massachusetts, according to reports quoted by Florence I. Taylor of
the National Committee on Child Labor, it was found that the average
fourteen-year-old mill boy was decidedly below standard in weight and
height; and that the sixteen-year-old boys did not show a normal gain
in height over the fifteen-year-old boys, and actually decreased two
and a half pounds in average weight. “It was evident from the physical
examination alone,” said the report, “that there were boys whose
interests from the point of view of physical welfare called for further
attention after being permitted to go to work, whatever the work for
which an employment certificate might be issued.”
In the printing trades, in the paint shops, in glass works, in
coal-mines, in fact, in every place where children are employed, we
find the physical effects all bad. The undeveloped boy or girl is more
susceptible to diseases that are inherent in the several businesses
themselves. For instance, lead attacks a child worker more quickly
than it would an adult. The fumes inhaled and the substances breathed
in affect the child, and owing to the demands put upon his physical
strength by his growing body it is difficult for nature to throw off
the bad effects of these poisons.
=Child Labor and Education.= Another evil is the loss of educational
opportunities. “There is plenty of time for the children to go to
school,” is a common saying among fathers and mothers. “I will send
Mary to school next year,” said a farmer in Oklahoma. “She wants to
go on with her class. I cannot see that it makes any great difference
whether she gets her learning this year or next.” Mary was fourteen
years old and we have no record of Mary’s career, but it is quite
probable that she never got a chance to go back to school. The school
promised to boys and girls who are being used in gainful occupations
is like the promise that St. Patrick made to the snakes in Ireland
after he had put them all into a box. He promised that he would let
them out to-morrow, but to-morrow never came, according to the old
Irish legend.
A returning visitor from Russia tells us that the cause of Russia’s
collapse is to be found in the ignorance of the people. Only one per
cent. of the people are able to read and write. In the midst of this
dense ignorance the peasant groups believe everything and nothing; are
easily influenced by anything no matter how unsubstantial, passionate,
cruel, brutish. No wonder that Russia presents one of the most pitiable
spectacles of any nation in the world’s history. There is serious
danger that in America we will produce a rural peasantry that is
ignorant, and if such should be the case, there will grow up with this
ignorance a narrow-minded prejudice against everything that we think is
worth while in life. Education is the hope of this nation as well as
that of every other nation.
=What of Disposition and Character?= Child labor has a bad effect on
the disposition. It crushes initiative from the group, and while it
will develop a type of leadership in the future, the leadership is not
that of free, broad-minded Americans, but is self-assertive cheap,
tricky, and clannishly shrewd. For instance, I was told that the
children attending school in an Arkansas city who came from the mill
district were the leaders in all the sports. I asked some of the boys
about this, and named to them several who I had been told were leaders.
The reply was that these fellows were not leaders but were bullies. “No
matter what we play, they want to run everything, and if we do not
do what they want us to do, we have a fuss.” The struggle in the mill
and the bearing of responsibilities had led the mill boys to rely upon
themselves. They knew that they could never get anything unless they
got it for themselves and by the most direct and brutal means. In an
age when a new emphasis is being put upon cooperation any power that
warps the disposition and creates wrong ideals is a real menace.
=Robbers of Childhood.= “Ketch,” cried a small lad as he turned with
the ball in his hand just as he was entering the mill door at the end
of the thirty minute noon period of freedom. The boy to whom he had
called, and who had been playing ball with him during this period
raised his hands preparatory to catching the ball. Then he dropped them
to his side and said, “Naw, don’t throw it, else we’ll get fined for
not comin’ in on time after the whistle blew.” No time for play! Thirty
minutes for lunch and out of that thirty minutes these boys had taken
as much as possible for a game of ball. By night they would be so tired
that there would be no inclination to play. They would stand around
and talk a little, or sit on the front porch for an hour after supper,
and then crawl into bed and sleep until aroused by the whistle of the
factory early in the morning. This was the life of these children. The
only period in their lives when they might have been free was taken
away from them and they were made to work in the mills of industry,
grinding out the raw materials of civilization which go into the very
foundation of our society, and grinding out at the same time the joy
of life and the possibilities of ever being able to gain the best that
life holds in store for them.
=A National Evil.= East, west, north, and south we have been robbing
children on every hand. California canners deplore the conditions
among the child workers in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts those who
employ children find excuses for themselves in the laws of the state,
and in the traditions of New England, but they have no good thing to
say about conditions in the mills of the South. In the South it is
easy to find men who are responsible for the children working who see
nothing but good evolution of the family from bad rural conditions to
a condition of comparative opulence in their mill cities, but who can
see nothing good in the child labor as it is found in the coal-mines
in Pennsylvania and the beet-fields of the Northwest. In Montana and
Nebraska the farmer everywhere will tell you that “Nothing is so good
for a child as to work in the beet-fields. It makes a man of him
quicker than anything else.”
=The Unfinished Task.= When the Federal Child Labor Law was passed
which prohibited the shipping of any goods in interstate commerce
that had been manufactured by child labor, a great many people
foolishly thought that the last trench was taken and the final victory
won in behalf of the children. Now that this law has been declared
unconstitutional we will have to begin the fight for its reenactment
in terms that will be in accord with the constitution of the United
States. This law was a great advance over anything we have ever had
before. While it held, it released thousands of children from toil,
but there were still employed in small towns, in villages, and in the
rural communities boys and girls in domestic service, as bootblacks, as
newsboys, as messenger boys, and at work in stores and local shops.
According to the last census in the United States, 1,990,225 children
under fifteen years of age are at work at some gainful occupation and
895,976 of these children are thirteen or under. Advanced legislation
has been taken in most of the states, but as the standards of such
legislation rise in the different states it becomes clear that with the
reenactment of the child labor law further steps must be taken for the
protection of children against exploitation. For instance, the child
labor law can be administered effectively and for the best good of the
child only in connection with compulsory education laws. It is futile,
and dangerous as well, to take the children out of the mills and leave
them in idleness upon the streets. Higher and better health standards
must be raised and safeguards thrown about the home and school life of
the children. Owen Lovejoy says, “The physical development of children
securing employment is quite as important as their age.”
[Illustration:
Photo from National Child Labor Committee.
We have thousands of children in America doing work which they ought
not to do.]
=The War and Childhood.= The war has put a new emphasis upon the value
of children as industrial assets, and many states attempted to rescind
the laws protecting children so that they might be allowed to work in
the munition factories as a war measure. England had her experience.
Schools suffered, juvenile delinquency grew, and chaos resulted from
the short-sighted policy of those who wanted children to help out in
a time of need. An English periodical is quoted as saying, “When the
farmers clamored for boys and girls at the outbreak of the war, it was
‘for a few weeks only,’ and ‘to save the harvest.’ The few weeks have
spread out to a few years; and a few years cover all the brief period
‘’twixt boy and man’ when character is molded, education completed,
and skill of hand and eye and intellect acquired. Even in the time of
peace one of our statesmen said that one of the most urgent national
problems was how to check the evils by which too many of our bright,
clean, clever boys leaving school at the ages of thirteen or fourteen,
had become ignorant and worthless hooligans at seventeen or eighteen.
Much has been done in recent years by patient, skilful endeavor to
stanch this wound in the body politic; but now all is reversed and
the hooligan harvest promises to be truly plenteous. The victims
are of two classes. First, the little children taken from school at
illegal ages for a few weeks under promises that their interrupted
school time should be completed later on--a ‘later on’ which was
never really practicable, and is now frankly abandoned. Secondly, the
boys and girls, who, having completed their legal school attendance,
would normally have gone to learn a trade, and would by a few years
of patient training and industry at small wages have made themselves
skilled workers and worthy citizens. But training for any future
efficiency, either industrial, social, or moral, has been brushed aside
by the necessities or the hysteria of war time.” It remains to be seen
whether we will learn the lesson from Britain’s experience.
=The Church’s Part.= There is no one thing in which the church should
be so much interested as in the welfare of the children. When Jesus was
asked who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he took a little
child and set him in the midst of the disciples. If any one offends a
child, he said, it were better for him that “a millstone were hanged
about his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.” Entrance into his
kingdom was dependent upon a childlike attitude, and the measure of
rewards and punishments was to be meted out according to the treatment
of children by the individual man and woman.
“Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst?” is the question which
we must ask. “Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye
did it not unto me,” is the promised reply. The program of the church
relating to the children is perfectly simple and plain. Each church
should keep in close touch with the work of the National Committee on
Child Labor. Information can be secured by writing to the Secretary,
Owen R. Lovejoy, 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York. One Sunday in
each year, the fourth Sunday in January, is set aside as Child Labor
Sunday. Every church should take pains to observe this day and make
it a time when the members of the church will be made acquainted with
the work being done by the Child Labor Committee; and should strive to
understand the conditions concerning the child laborers of America, and
the plans and purposes that are being devised for meeting needs and for
protecting our nation’s greatest asset. Child Labor Sunday was observed
in nearly 10,000 churches last year.
The child laborer suffers because we do not know about him. His life
is lived in a world apart. While he is producing the things that we
accept, we have forgotten or passed over lightly the needs of the
producer himself. The war puts a new responsibility upon us. Its agony
and suffering have made us seemingly callous to suffering and we stand
in grave danger of losing our power to sympathize. It is during such
periods as these that the hard won gains of generations may be lost.
We have gone far in our legislation for the protection of children
since the days when the Earl of Shaftsbury first began his work for the
poor boys of London. Much remains to be done. The church cannot slacken
its efforts nor clear its skirts of responsibility if it does not exert
every effort and put forth all its strength to pass new legislation,
and steadfastly to set its face against every effort to break down
existing laws or set them aside even as a temporary measure.
The battle for democracy cannot be won, and will not be won, even with
the destruction of German autocracy if we allow the bulwark that has
been built up for the protection of the children of democracy to be
torn down.
CHAPTER XII
THE MESSAGE AND MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH TO A WORLD OF WORK
“He has never given me a mouthful of bread nor means to gain it. What
have I to do with your God?” This was the answer of an immigrant woman
to an appeal made by the church visitor, and it strikes nearer the
heart of our modern life than it appears upon first thought. Why indeed
should a person acknowledge kinship to a God who allows suffering,
sorrow, and want in the world? It is not enough to answer such a
question by pointing to the ultimate ends God has in view, for with
hunger gnawing at the very vitals it is difficult to be philosophical
or to meet the problems of existence in a quiet frame of mind. It is
undoubtedly true that a large part of the misery and suffering of this
world is caused by the sins and incompetency of the individual; but it
does not help one to bear misfortune to know that he is to blame for
his own condition. Is it any easier for the mother to teach her hungry
little children to say their prayers asking the heavenly Father to feed
them when she knows that her husband has brought the suffering and
want through his evil conduct? But suppose she knows that her husband
has tried as hard as possible, and in spite of all his efforts and all
her care there is not enough bread for the little ones. She is very
likely to grow impatient with the religion that talks about love, and
yet allows bad social conditions to exist in the community that robs
children of their childhood, destroys manhood, and makes women slaves
in their own homes.
We have studied certain groups of the workers, and great as is the
contribution made by these workers, it is only a small part of the
story. The world of the workers is a very large world. Within this
world things are produced that enrich mankind to a degree that has
never even been dreamed of in any other age of the world’s history. The
men who are producing these things are the true servants of the world.
=Social Salvation and the Wage-Earners.= The church, in order to retain
its ascendency in national life, must lay increasing emphasis upon the
importance of social salvation. The importance of social salvation as
contrasted with individual salvation was seen by the great spiritual
teachers of the past; but modern civilization, with its marvels of
intercommunication, has placed a new emphasis upon mutual dependence of
associated human beings, and has made self-realization a possibility
only in connection with the salvation of the social group. The social
group consists mainly of wage-earners, two thirds of those gainfully
employed in the nation being dependent for food, shelter, and clothing
upon a daily, weekly, or monthly wage. Therefore, social salvation is
largely a question of the salvation of the wage-earner. The problem
is a dual one. It is material and spiritual. It is material, because
the higher purposes of the Eternal cannot be attained in an atmosphere
of inefficiency, disease, unemployment, vice, crime, and general
destitution. It is spiritual, because the elimination of inefficiency,
disease, unemployment, vice, crime, and general destitution will not
regenerate character. The salvation of the wage-earner must, therefore,
be achieved by the combined efforts of three important agencies of
social reconstruction: religion, education, and government. Religion
furnishes the motive, education the method, and government the
mechanism of social reconstruction; each of these three is impotent
without the other two.
Religion from this view-point must be personal and social in order
that regenerated individuals may work for the material and spiritual
regeneration of national life. Education from this view-point must
be technical, scientific, moral, and universal so that all may have
the opportunity to become skilled workers, progressive thinkers, and
efficient citizens. Government from this view-point must be controlled
by the religious element of the community and equipped with a program
of economic and social reform based on scientific investigation.
Scientific studies of the wage-earners’ communities show that a family
of five in a large American city requires a minimum income of $900 in
order to maintain its physical equilibrium, and that three out of every
four adult males, and nineteen out of every twenty adult females in
the United States, receive less than $600 a year. No one can longer
doubt that the hardships and depravity of the poor are more economic
and social than personal; and that the responsibility for human misery
is put squarely upon the more fortunate members of society. The way of
salvation for the poor and helpless lies along the path of the educated
conscience of the rich and powerful.
=Workers and the Church.= Much has been written and said in criticism
of the church. Many statistics have been given to prove that the
workers are not members of the church. For the most part the figures
quoted are mere guesses. It is sheer folly to assume that the working
people of our nation are not religious. Religion is as natural to all
people as is breathing. The belief in God is well-nigh universal. It is
a fact, however, that comparatively few of the mass of workers of our
country are connected in any way with the church, or have any part in
carrying on the functions of organized religion. There are a great many
working people in the churches, but in proportion to the large number
of wage-earners in each community there are comparatively few of the
actual producers in the churches.
[Illustration:
Board of Home Missions, Church Extension. Methodist Episcopal Church.
A Russian Forum in session in the Church of All Nations, Morgan
Memorial, Boston.]
A study made in city after city shows that the churches are largely
made up of the well-to-do, middle-class people. In one typical city
of 75,000 people there were found to be approximately 30,000 members
of all the religious organizations, Protestant, Catholic, and Jews.
Of this total number approximately 1,000 were wage-earners, that
is, men and women working in shops and factories; 500 of these were
members of the Catholic Church, and the other 500 were distributed
among the sixteen Protestant churches. There were a great many
persons in these churches who were dependent upon their wages; such
as clerks, stenographers, bookkeepers, and others who should be
classed as belonging to the industrial group. But as some one has
said, the distinction between people who are in the churches and those
untouched by the church can be drawn in this way: those who refer to
the remuneration received for their work as a salary, and their work
as a position, are in one group and they attend church; the other
group is made up of those who refer to their work as a job, and the
remuneration received as wages, and but few of these go to church. The
conditions found in that instance are the same that would be found in
most cities of the same size in America. The total membership was a
little larger, perhaps, for in most places only about one third of the
people are connected with the churches.
=The Makers of Things Outside the Churches.= Communities in which
the church has failed are the communities where may be found most of
the workers who are the actual producers of the things that go to
make up our life. The men who run the lathes and other machines, the
day-laborers on the street, in the factory, and on the railroads;
these men and their families are the ones untouched by the church. The
foremen, the better class of skilled mechanics, and those workers who
are doing the more congenial kinds of work are the ones found in the
churches. I asked one of the leading labor leaders of the country why
it is that the laboring man is opposed to the church. “Opposed?” he
answered. “He is not opposed. The average laboring man living under
average conditions does not know that there is a church in town.” In
other words, the church moves in an orbit that is totally removed from
the life of the mass of the workers.
=When Nineteen Men Last Went to Church.= During the last year I took
occasion to ask different men that I met at various times what they
thought of the church. I have the record of the conversation of
nineteen men on this subject. Not one of these men had been to church
with any degree of regularity during the past five years; three of
them had attended the Billy Sunday meetings in the various cities. They
went to see the evangelist, however, just as they would visit Barnum
& Bailey’s circus, and they professed to having come away from the
meetings in the same frame of mind as if they had been attending such
an entertainment. Five of the men were Jews, nine were Roman Catholics,
and five were Protestants. They gave various reasons for not going to
church, but all agreed on three things: they had no especial criticism
or complaint to make regarding the church; it was easier to stay at
home on Sundays than it was to go to church; the church had very little
to do with the things that they were interested in. One of the men
said, “The minister stands in a pulpit over my head and talks down to
me about things that I am not interested in.” They also agreed that
they could see no special reason why they should be influenced or moved
to live according to the requirements of the church.
The church has no especial authority and a life of piety did not appeal
to these men. My conclusion was that the church had lost its grip upon
these men because of the innate selfishness of the individual and the
unwillingness on his part to pay the price demanded of a true follower
of any religion. These men were living under false impressions as
to what the church required and knew nothing of the quality of the
church’s message. The fact remained, however, that the church failed
to reach them, and if we define religion as the giving of one’s self
to the group, these men had no religion, for they were each living
their own lives in their own selfish way. Of these nineteen men three
were skilled mechanics, five worked in a cottonseed mill, four were
traveling salesmen, and the remaining seven were business men. This
would seem to prove that the church has failed to reach other groups in
the community as well as the groups of laboring men.
=The Church and the Age.= The new social order must be based upon
righteousness, and the church must furnish the power that will carry
forth the plans of reconstruction to ultimate victory. It must supply
the regenerating social influences for our generation in order to live
up to its privilege and fulfil its function in the world. It is the
will rather than the intellect of men that is primarily influenced
by religion. The doctrine of the church attracts only a few people;
speculation on theological questions, and arguments regarding life and
its problems are futile in the face of the bitter experiences that lead
the majority of the working people to view life from the standpoint
of the pessimist. What men want to know about the church is, does it
make people better neighbors? Is there more kindness in the community
because of the church? These are the things that are of paramount
importance. A boy passed by three churches on his way to attend a
certain Sunday-school. A neighbor said to him, “Why do you go so far?
why don’t you come to my Sunday-school?” “I do not care how far it is,”
he replied; “they like me down at the other church.” This is the secret
of the success of much that is being done to-day by different churches.
A prominent pastor desiring to discover how his preaching would affect
different classes of people had a friend invite some persons from
different parts of the city; and then after the service these people
were invited to meet with others in one of the classrooms to discuss
the sermon. It was almost impossible to draw any expressions of opinion
from them as to the value of the service, but they agreed that they did
not feel at home in the church. Yet none of these visitors could tell
what he meant by “feeling at home.” The fact is, however, more people
go to church to-day because of the friendships that they find within
the institution than because of their desire for religious instruction.
A large proportion of the people who are outside of the church are
outside because to them the institution seems cold, narrow, and
unattractive, and fits the description given by Robert Louis Stevenson
of many churches that he had known, “A fire at which no man ever warms
his hands.”
=A Ministry to All.= The Morgan Memorial Church of Boston touches
a wide community and is carrying on a very extensive work. It has
enlarged its plant from time to time until it occupies almost a
solid block. There has recently been erected a new building to be
operated in connection with this institution known as the Church of
all Nations. Here is the gathering place of the multitude from every
land who now live in the south end of Boston. In addition to the
regular religious services there is a rescue mission for the “down
and outs,” and dormitories for men and women where clean beds can
be secured at a reasonable price. There are workshops, employment
bureaus, a restaurant, a reading-room and, in fact, under one roof this
church houses a community of interests, economic, industrial, social,
educational, and religious. On the front of the building there is a
lighted cross, and to all of the south end of Boston this cross means
hope.
=Story of Twenty-five Years.= The church has not accomplished all that
might have been accomplished, but when we study the history of the
last twenty-five years and take stock of the results that have been
achieved, we find that there are countless things that indicate a real
life interest, and a purpose toward achievement in the church.
Twenty-five years ago the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign
Missions was just beginning, and a Social Service Commission for the
churches would have been considered as something having no part in the
churches’ work. In fact, at that time the men who were the prophets
of the new social order were looked upon as dangerous leaders. There
were only a few books that dealt with the social aspects of the
teachings of Jesus, and these were theological and theoretical rather
than practical. At that time institutional churches were novelties,
and the efforts that were being directed toward the solution of the
social questions by the church were very often efforts in the wrong
direction. The institutional church was not a complete success because
it attempted to do for people instead of inspiring people to do for
themselves. The institutional church and the modern socialized church
have the same relationship to each other as the old alms-giving
societies have to the modern charitable organizations. Legislation in
the interests of women and children was considered totally out of the
realm of Christian interests. “The church was put in the world to save
souls and not to dabble in politics,” was a favorite definition of the
church’s sphere. There was little church unity or coordination of
effort. The churches were more busy fighting each other than they were
fighting the common foes of the community. There were only one or two
professors in our theological seminaries who were teaching sociology,
and of one of these men an eminent authority in the church of that
time said: “He ruined a lot of good ministers and made a lot of poor
socialists by turning the attention of the young men who came under his
teaching to merely humanitarian interests.” The church leaders knew
nothing about the labor movement; in fact, at that time, the modern
labor movement as represented in the American Federation of Labor was
just beginning to gain strength. The church made no special efforts to
interpret the spirit of Christ in terms of international relationship.
=The Present Situation.= Now, when we compare the present situation
with these facts, there is every reason to be encouraged. Never in
the history of the world was there a time when organized religion
was more efficient. When was there ever such interest in religious
education? so much cooperative effort among Protestant bodies? such an
eagerness to discuss ways in which men of widely different views may
work together? The money given for missions and social reconstruction
reaches proportions that were never dreamed of before. Jesus Christ
is recognized to-day as the friend of all men and his salvation
is recognized as applying to social, industrial, and educational
relationships as well as to individual needs. He is the Savior of the
individual and also the Savior of the world in which the individual
lives. It is true that the individual cannot enter the kingdom of God
unless he is born again, but it is equally true that the whole social
fabric must be recast and social relationships regenerated, else the
kingdom of God cannot come in this world.
Nearly all the parables of Jesus have to do with the idea of mutual
helpfulness. The parable of the Good. Samaritan will always stand first
as the exemplification of the life that bears another’s burdens. The
teachings of Jesus sums itself up in supreme love for God and for one’s
fellow man. At the marriage feast the multitude were invited and they
came from the highways and the hedges. According to Jesus’ teachings
all material possessions are to be counted as nothing when compared to
the use and helpfulness of these possessions. His bitter denunciation
and burning wrath were turned against the hypocrites who made long
prayers, took the widow’s mite, paid their church dues, forgot mercy,
and used harsh measures against the defenseless. In every instance
where Jesus referred to future punishment, it was to be visited upon
the individual because he failed to live according to the law of love
and was making burdens harder to be borne rather than helping men to
bear them. His law was the law of cooperation.
The early church began among the very poor; and all through the
Apostolic Age the slave and the owner, the poor man and the rich man,
met on the plane of equality. There was only one interest for all and
that was the life of the Master. It is said that Napoleon and several
of his aides were one day walking along the country road. They met
a peasant carrying a load of fagots who did not get out of the path
as quickly as one of the emperor’s companions thought he should, so
stepping up to the rustic he took him by the shoulders and started
to push him out of the way. “Stop,” said Napoleon, motioning to his
companions to step out of the road while he did the same. “Messieurs,
let us respect the burden, even if you do not respect the man.” In the
community there are a multitude of burden bearers. The church must be
filled with the desire to do what it can to improve the conditions in
the community life, and to add to the good of all the people, so that
the community relationships will no longer be regarded as matters of
indifference to be taken up or laid aside without faithfulness to the
gospel. The success of the church must be measured in terms of the
community life.
[Illustration:
Board of Home Missions. Church Extension. Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Church of All Nations, Boston, provided a sleeping place in its
hall for over five hundred of the unemployed in the winter of 1915.]
=Inspiration for Social Effort.= The church is not merely a reform
agency. It is not primarily interested in housing, ventilation,
sanitation, and labor questions, but is completely interested in the
moral aspects of these questions, and their effect upon the life of the
community and the life of the individuals in the community. Any church
which fails to educate its members to look at all such matters from
the moral point of view, and fails to make effective the principles
of Jesus in relation to the social life of the community, is falling
far short of its duty. It is no wonder that the men and women who are
struggling with the evils of society grow impatient with the churches
that do not undertake to help humanity. One worker expresses it thus:
“The trouble with all social effort is that we have no inspiration for
the task. The churches that should be helping us by supplying this
inspiration are apparently afraid to take hold of the job.” This is too
sweeping a criticism, for there are hundreds of churches that are doing
just this thing.
=The Church and Other Organizations.= Instead of institutional
churches, however, we are substituting the socialized church, and it is
not what the church is doing as an institution but what it is inspiring
others to do in the community that counts most. When the church cannot
get any one else to do a certain task, then the church must shoulder
the responsibility itself. The church ought to cooperate with the
united charities of the community. It will not be enough for it to
have merely a member or two on the boards of these organizations; the
church as an organization must be in close touch with them, furnishing
money and workers, and helping to plan and carry out the plans of the
organization. Above all, it must supply the proper spirit of love which
will offset that professionalism which is to-day a growing evil in all
charitable effort.
=The Church and the Outcasts.= The church ought to be organized so
that the sick and the poor, the unfortunate and the people out of
work, would find it a friend and champion. There was a preacher in
one of our churches in a certain city who was greatly disliked by
all the so-called “respectable” people who knew him. As one man put
it, “He has long hair, a long tongue, and is a trouble-maker.” But
among the outcasts in the city he was known as the “Chaplain for the
nobody-knows-who.” By this term those who loved him meant that he was
a friend of the neglected people of the great city. After he died men
who had no use for him before began to tell of little illuminating
incidents in his life, and thousands of people testified to the fact
that he had been an inspiration and a help.
The early Christians were not a very respectable lot of people nor
would they have been very congenial. Probably some of our modern
churches are so fine that these people would have been considered out
of place; but it was to these people that Jesus preached his gospel in
the first place, and from them the influence of Christianity spread
until the whole life of the Roman world was brought under the control
of the new gospel. Now, of course, all the laboring groups that we
have been considering are not made up of the poorest people in the
community. The heart of the great mass of the people is sound to the
core; their principles are strong and their morals are uncorrupted.
We are very likely to measure morals by social customs. Just because
a man shaves every day and wears a white collar is no sign that he is
a gentleman; while the man who wears blue overalls, who shaves once
a week, whose face and hands are grimy with toil, is not by these
things made an uncouth barbarian. The reverse is very often true. The
unions have been educating their members; and the men gathered in these
organizations have a fund of common sense and a breadth of judgment
that would put to shame men who have had much larger experiences and
wider opportunities both for education and travel. The son of a man
with a salary of twelve to fifteen thousand a year was expelled from
one of our universities a few years ago; and in the same year the
honor man in the class was the son of a blacksmith who worked for one
of the Western coal-mining companies. This boy was one of a family
of six children. With the help and efforts of no one but himself he
was able to go through the university and graduate at the head of his
class. All the forces of our time are at work leveling the fictitious
and mischievous barriers that have been raised between men, and which
divide society into groups and classes.
=Wider Use of the Church Plant.= The church building can be used for
very much wider service than at present. The church is usually one of
the best-equipped buildings in the community. It has light, air, and
heating facilities and can take care of a large number of people. In
the Maverick Church, East Boston, they are using the church for club
purposes. Just at present plans are being devised whereby this property
will be used much more extensively for meeting the new needs put upon
the community by the old ship-building industry that has just been
revived. Plymouth Church, Oakland, California, is a veritable beehive
of industry. Every night different groups gather in the social clubs,
sewing classes, cooking classes, and other organizations. The community
looks upon this church as the natural meeting-place to discuss vital
problems. During the past winter in one of the Baptist churches on the
east side of New York different nationalities met night after night and
were instructed concerning patriotism and the moral issues of the war
by men who spoke the tongues of the men attending.
A Presbyterian church in Du Page County, Illinois, became famous
because it made its buildings available for all social activities
and interests of the community. A report of this work says: “The
older people often attend and engage in play with the young people.
Refreshments are served free at these gatherings. Special attention is
given to strangers and to the backward boys and girls, and a few of the
leaders have always upon their hearts those who are not of the fold of
Christ. The people become well acquainted, and such fellowship, such
friendships, such companionships are created--all centering around
the church!” The writer, telling of the work in another progressive
church, says: “This church has learned the value of the inspirational
meetings. Two principal ones are held each year. One takes place on New
Year’s eve when the whole community, old and young, gather at church as
one family to watch the old year out and to welcome in the new. This
is no common watch service. The evening is filled to overflowing with
good and interesting things. The other great inspirational meeting is
held at the close of the church year. It is an all day meeting, and
the whole countryside turns out to help round up the year’s work. The
ladies serve a banquet at noon free of charge. There is always good
music on this occasion and two or three talented participants from
outside supplement the home talent. These big meetings are of benefit
to the country people. They promote friendship and good fellowship, and
the dead level gait always receives a big jolt.” These are just a few
of the churches that are making good use of their buildings, and there
are hundreds of others all over the country. Whenever you feel that
the church is failing, just turn to the record of some church that is
really doing what it ought to do. You can easily find some such church,
and what is being done in one place can be done in another. People are
the same the world over, and all groups can be brought together upon a
common level of interests and good fellowship.
=A Program of Action.= The war has emphasized the necessity of making
our communities 100 per cent. American. We are thinking in terms of
nationalities and races now because of the present world crisis. We
need each community to be not only 100 per cent. American, but 100
per cent. democratic and neighborly. This involves the study of the
questions of the relation of the foreigner and of his Americanization;
the problems of the housing of the community, and the questions of
the eight-hour day and union labor. The charge that the church speaks
for the employer rather than for the workingman must be completely
answered, so that every workingman in every community will come to
realize from practical contact with the churches that he knows that
they are not capitalistic institutions. He must learn that they stand
for all men; and that they speak fairly and unreservedly for the cause
of humanity and champion the rights of men against the encroachment of
everything that would crush the spirit of man. The church must interest
itself in the problem of recreation. People used to work for a living;
now they work for profit. Playtime was formerly not such a problem as
it is to-day, for industry was not geared up to the same high pitch of
efficiency. To-day the margin of play is about the only margin of an
individual’s life when he is really himself. In our cities especially
the problem of play is a real problem. The questionable forms of
amusement are patronized, not because young men and young women are
inherently bad, but because they are the only means of recreation
offered. The motion-picture theater is popular because the best of the
drama has been put within reach of the average person. Public health
should be a vital consideration of the church. In fact, every line of
effort that involves the welfare and happiness of human beings is of
interest to the Christian church.
No church ought to have at first too intricate a program. More can be
accomplished by an active pro-virtue program than by one that is all
anti-vice, but the church must also be a fighting organization. We must
fight evil of every kind. The great struggle of the church against the
liquor traffic and against vice has resulted in a vast amount of good.
The thing to remember, however, is that the church must not stop simply
with its protest and its fight.
=The Ultimate End of All Effort.= Nothing material or physical is
final. We are not to provide social rooms, good healthful surroundings,
playgrounds, and other social good things just for themselves, but
because these things are essential to the best and highest moral
development of individuals. In the last analysis the work of the church
is the salvation of men and women. Its work, as has been said, is to
put a sky over men’s heads. You cannot save individuals by giving them
good physical surroundings, healthful conditions, and by supplying all
their physical needs. These are merely the steps to the temple of the
spirit. The weakness of most of our schemes for social betterment is
found in the fact that many of them would put a man in a fine room,
with good light, splendid furnishings, serve a sumptuous meal to him
and then start a force-pump and pump all the air out of the room. A man
may die in the midst of the finest things with which we can surround
him. People must grow, and growth demands atmosphere, and if we give
everything else and fail to create the right kind of atmosphere we are
failing. “Seek ye first his [God’s] kingdom, and his righteousness;
and all the other things shall be added unto you.” By this Jesus did
not mean that we were to put less emphasis on right conditions, but
that if we get conditions right, then we can work for the things that
really are of greatest interest. Above all, he was warning of the
danger that faces us to-day, of becoming so much interested in a man’s
social welfare that we lose sight of the emphasis which the great
Teacher would put upon the qualities which make up humanity.
We must recognize man as a spiritual being, and everything that goes to
make him better physically ought to make him better spiritually. The
best work of the church, and the work which God alone can do for the
community, is to carry humanity beyond physical betterment into the
realm of spiritual idealism. This is our task. This is the church’s
goal. When this is realized in all society then the kingdom of God will
be realized on earth; and the things that men create will be set in
right relationship to the men themselves; that is, they will become the
adjuncts of every man’s life and will minister to all human happiness.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A BRIEF READING LIST
_The Rural Problem_
Bailey, L. H. _The Country Life Movement in the United States._
1911. Macmillan Company, New York. 75 cents.
Brunner, Edmund de S. _Cooperation in Coopersburg._ 1917.
Missionary Education Movement, New York. 50 cents.
Brunner, Edmund de S. _The New Country Church Building._ 1917.
Missionary Education Movement, New York. 75 cents.
Earp, Edwin L. _The Rural Church Movement._ 1914. Methodist Book
Concern, New York. 75 cents.
Mills, Harlow S. _The Making of a Country Parish._ 1914. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 50 cents.
Morse, Richard. _Fear God in Your Own Village._ 1918. Henry Holt &
Co., New York. $1.30.
Vogt, Paul. _The Church and Country Life._ 1916. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. $1.25.
Wilson, Warren H. _The Church at the Center._ 1914. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 50 cents.
Wilson, Warren H. _The Church of the Open Country._ 1911.
Missionary Education Movement, New York. 40 cents.
_Industrial Relations_
Abbott, Grace. _The Immigrant and the Community._ 1917. Century
Company, New York. $1.50.
Antin, Mary. _The Promised Land._ 1912. Houghton, Mifflin Company,
Boston. $1.75.
Burritt, Arthur W. _Profit Sharing._ 1918. Harper & Brothers, New
York. $2.50.
Carlton, Frank T. _History and Problems of Organised Labor._ 1911.
D. C. Heath & Co., Boston. $2.00.
Cole, G. D. H. _Self Government in Industry._ 1918. Macmillan
Company, New York. $1.75.
Fitch, John A. _The Steel Workers_ (Pittsburgh Survey). 1910.
Charities Publication Committee, New York. $1.50.
Goldmark, Josephine, _Fatigue and Efficiency._ 1912. Russell Sage
Foundation, New York. $2.00.
Haynes, George E. _Negro New-Comers in Detroit, Michigan._ 1918.
Home Missions Council, New York. 20 cents.
Kelley, Florence. _Modern Industry in Relation to the Family._
1914. Longmans, Green & Co. New York. $1.00.
Mangano, Antonio. _The Sons of Italy._ 1917. Missionary Education
Movement, New York. 60 cents.
Redfield, William C. _The New Industrial Day._ 1912. Century
Company, New York. $1.25.
Ross, J. E. _The Right to Work._ 1917. Devin-Adair Company, New
York. $1.00.
Ryan, John A. _A Living Wage._ 1906. Macmillan Company, New York.
$1.25.
Shriver, William P. _Immigrant Forces._ 1913. Missionary Education
Movement, New York. 60 cents.
Symposium by seven well-known authors, _The Path of Labor_. 1918.
Council of Women for Home Missions, New York. 57 cents.
Ward, Harry F. _The Gospel for a Working World._ 1918. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 60 cents.
Ward, Harry F. _The Labor Movement._ 1917. Sturgis & Walton. New
York. $1.25.
Ward, Harry F. _Poverty and Wealth._ 1915. Methodist Book Concern,
New York. 50 cents.
Ward, Harry F. _Social Evangelism._ 1915. Missionary Education
Movement, New York. 50 cents.
Warne, Frank J. _The Slav Invasion and the Mine Workers._ 1904.
J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. $1.00.
_Women and Children_
Abbott, Edith. _Women in Industry._ 1916. Daniel Appleton &
Company, New York. $2.50.
Addams, Jane. _The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets._ 1909.
Macmillan Company, New York. 50 cents.
Henry, Alice. _The Trade Union Woman._ 1915. Daniel Appleton & Co.,
New York. $1.50.
Fraser, Helen. _Woman and War Work._ 1918. G. Arnold Shaw, New
York. $1.50.
MacLean, Annie M. _Wage-Earning Women._ 1910. Macmillan Company,
New York. $1.25.
MacLean, Annie M. _Women Workers and Society._ 1916. A. C. McClurg,
Chicago. 50 cents.
Mangold, George B. _Child Problems._ 1917. Macmillan Company, New
York. $1.25.
Schreiner, Olive. _Woman and Labor._ 1911. Frederick A. Stokes
Company, New York. $1.25.
_The Church and Social Conditions_
Atkinson, Henry A. _The Church and the People’s Play._ 1915.
Pilgrim Press, Boston. $1.25.
Cutting, R. Fulton. _The Church and Society._ 1912. Macmillan
Company, New York. $1.25.
Felton, Ralph A. _A Study of a Rural Parish._ 1915. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 50 cents.
Gates, Herbert W. _Recreation and the Church._ 1917. University
Press, Chicago. $1.00.
Harrison, Shelby M.; Tippy, Worth M.; Ward, Harry F.; and Atkinson,
Henry A. _What Every Church Should Know about Its Community._
Federal Council of Churches, New York. 10 cents.
Hughan, Jessie W. _The Facts of Socialism._ 1913. John Lane
Company, New York. 75 cents.
Mangold, George B. _The Challenge of St. Louis._ 1917. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 60 cents.
Marsh, Daniel L. _The Challenge of Pittsburgh._ 1917. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 60 cents.
Mathews, Shailer. _The Individual and the Social Gospel._ 1914.
Missionary Education Movement, New York. 25 cents.
Rauschenbusch, Walter. _Christianity and the Social Crisis._ 1907.
Macmillan Company, New York. 50 cents.
Rauschenbusch, Walter. _The Social Principles of Jesus._ 1916.
Association Press, New York. 50 cents.
Roberts, Richard. _The Church in the Commonwealth._ 1918. Frederick
A. Stokes Company, New York. $1.00.
Spargo, John. _The Spiritual Significance of Socialism._ 1912.
B. W. Huebsch, New York. 50 cents.
Vedder, Henry C. _The Gospel of Jesus and the Problem of
Democracy._ 1914. Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50.
White, Charles L. _The Churches at Work._ 1915. Missionary
Education Movement, New York. 60 cents.
INDEX
A
Accidents, in mining, 72, 73;
in steel-mills, 85, 86;
on railroads, 99-101
Actors, Church Alliance and Fund, 130;
off the stage, 128
Anthony, Susan B., referred to, 162
Anthracite coal areas, 69
Anti-loafer laws, 152
Apathy of mill workers, 91
Arbitration in clothing industry, 60, 61
Architecture and present use of steel, 79-81
Artificial flowers, 132
B
Bag and hemp factory conditions, 165
Baker Manufacturing Company, 93
Banana boat and rush unloading, 137
Baptist East Side churches in New York City, 205
Bargains in ready-made clothing, 55
Bathtubs and buttons, 114
Beet, culture, 20, 174, 175;
sugar, 20;
use of child labor, 20, 21, 174, 175, 185
Bessemer steel, 82-84
Bible, study class members, Y. W. C. A., 4, 5;
unopened to Jewish radicals, 62
Billy Sunday meetings, 195
Bituminous coal-fields, 69
Booth, Maud Ballington, referred to, 162
Brakeman, accident to a, 100
Brick and mortar not the soul of the city, 33
Bridge cables, steel, 82
Burley tobacco, 173
C
Canada, western grain-belt, 17
Cane-sugar makers, 18, 19
Casual workers and the common man, 153
Casualty lists. See _Accidents_
Catholics, 90, 120, 194, 196
Cemeteries, well-tended Western, 27
Chaplain beloved, a, 203
Chicago, Industrial Exhibition, picture of a mother, 58;
stock-yards, 150
Child labor, in agriculture, 174-185;
in home work, 58;
reasons for, 176;
task of the church, 187-189
Child Labor Law, Federal, very helpful but unconstitutional, 185
Child Labor, National Committee on, 188;
Sunday, 188
“Children in Agriculture,” quoted, 175
Children’s Bureau in Washington, D. C., 90
China, actors in, 130
Christ. See _Jesus Christ_
Christmas-time work, 139
Church, duty of, 197;
responsibility, 151, 152;
statistics
of per cent. of working people, 194;
work, past and present, 28, 191-209;
with country people, 27-32;
with factory folks, 46-48;
with garment-makers, 62, 63;
with miners, 75-78;
with rail and vessel forces, 109-111;
with steel workers, 91-94;
with Tampa cigarmakers, 122, 123;
with theater people, 130;
with transient classes, 150-153;
with women and children, 169-171, 187-189
Churches, criticism of, 194;
faulty distribution of, 127;
indifference to, 195
Cigarmakers, 116-120;
social worker’s story, 125
City and country life depicted and distinguished, 1, 23, 24
City church statistics, 194
Clothes and civilization, 34
Clothing industry, 54;
labor troubles in, 58-61;
materials, 34-36
Coal, importance of, 65, 66;
mining methods and miners, 67-74
Cœur d’Alene district, Idaho, 68, 75
Cold storage, 178
Conservation, of fuel, 11;
of wheat, 18
Consumers’ League, 52, 171
Cooper Union, New York City, a social center, 62
Cooperation, 170, 184;
among the churches, 200
Copper, 68, 69, 74
Corn and hogs, price of, 21
Corn belt, 21
Cost of living, 9, 178
Cotton, 36, 37;
importance increased by the invention of the cotton-gin, 37
Cotton-mills and workers, in Northern cities, 34, 44-46;
in
Southern towns and villages, 40-43, 47
Coxey’s army, 135-137
Cuban traits, 121
D
Dressmaking industry, 53
Du Page County, Illinois, Presbyterian Church, 206
Duty of the church, the, 197
E
Early ambitions, 3
Early Christians, influence of, 203
Effects of specialization in work, 7
Efficient women in war and other work, 159-165
Eliot, George, referred to, 162
Engineer, the, and the world war, 98-101;
wish to renew service, 99
Evansville, Wisconsin, Manufacturing Company, 93
F
Factory system, 7
Fall River factories, 34
Farm life, 23
Fashion and clothes, a shop-girl’s comment, 51
Fatalism of steel-mill workers, 91
Feudal castles and modern mills compared, 33
Fictitious barriers in society, 204, 205
Fifth Avenue, New York City, 49, 61
Film making, 43, 131, 132
“Fine art of living, the,” 6
Fire and coal, 65
Fishing village preacher’s report, 3, 4
Food-producing industries, 21
Ford Hall, Boston, a social center, 62
Foreign element on Western farms, 27
Formaldehyde used in a church, 151, 152
French Revolution conditions, 179
Fuel administrator, 66
Furs, 126
Furuseth, Andrew, work for the sailors, 108, 109
G
Garment makers, 51-53, 57-63
Garment Makers’ Union, New York City, 50
Garment workers in New York City, 49, 50, 53, 55-58, 61-63
Gentleman, deeper than outward marks, 204
Girl clerks’ wages affected by “pin-money” competitors, 164, 165
God, question of an immigrant woman, 191;
work for the community, 209
Gold and silver mining, 69
Government ownership of railroads, 106
Grain belts of Canada and the United States, 17
Group needs and the church, 13, 14
H
Havana and Key West, 116
Health of garment workers, 56
Henry, Miss Alice, quoted, 162, 165, 166
Herring, Rev. Hubert C., referred to, 27
Home, importance of, 156;
work conditions, 57
Home mission work, pressing need for, 30
Hookworm, 41
Hoover, Mr., 18
Housing conditions and the cost of living, 9
Howe, Julia Ward, referred to, 162
I
Idaho, labor legislation in, 146
Immigrant, mill workers, 89;
woman and God, 191;
women in Saint Louis, 166
I. W. W., code, 142;
efforts in East Tampa, 121;
street song in Seattle, 141, 142
Industrial, army, questions raised, 135;
classes created, 8
Inefficiency, causes of, 148
“Infant Mortality” statistics, 90
Institutional churches, 203
Interdependence, 10
International Seamen’s Union, 108
Interstate Commerce Commission, 105
Iron, 69, 80-83
Italians, 49, 56, 57, 63, 67
J
Jesus Christ, 12, 187, 200-202, 204, 209
Jewelry industry, 132
Jewish characteristics, 54
Jews, 49, 53-56, 62, 63, 194
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, mill workers, 89
Judson Memorial Baptist Church, New York City, 63
Juvenile court case in Tampa, Florida, 122
K
Kelly, Mrs. Florence, referred to, 52
Kerensky, mistake of, 22
King, Henry Churchill, quoted, 6
L
Landlord and tenant, 25
Lawrence, Massachusetts, cotton-mills, 34
Lead and zinc, 68, 69
Life in the Southern mill village, 40-44, 47
Livermore, California, railroad wreck, 99
Loom, contrast between earlier and later, 36-38
Lovejoy, Owen R., quoted, 186;
referred to, 188
Lowell, Massachusetts, cotton-mills, 34
Loyalty, labor’s lack of, 7
Lumber companies of the Northwest, bad conditions for laborers,
144, 145
Luxuries, defined, 114, 115;
examples of producers of, 116-134;
harmless and hurtful, 115
M
Machinery, 37;
has subordinated man, 46
McIntire, Miss Ruth, quoted, 175
Manufacture of clothing materials, 35, 36
Maverick Church in East Boston, 205
Men, as users of clothes, 34;
as creators of things, 15
Metal mine workers, 74;
wages, 75
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, picture referred to, 84
Michigan Central Railroad accident, 100
Migratory workers, 143
Millinery, 132, 139
Mills and workers, 33-47;
experience of a family, 44, 45
Mine workers, accidents, 72;
forgotten, 67;
wages, 73, 75
Minerals, valuable, 65, 68
Mining town, life in a, 5, 6
Missionary work at home, 127
Morgan Memorial Church, Boston, 198
Morris, William, demand for joy in work, 6
Motion-pictures, 43;
theater statistics, 130-132
Motorman a suicide, 107
Municipal ownership, San Francisco, 108
N
Napoleon, anecdote of, 201
National Child Labor Committee, 175, 181
National Consumers’ League, 52
Negro philosophy of work, 115;
work and wages on sugar plantation, 19, 20
Neighborliness, 11, 12
New York _Herald_, referred to, 119
Nickel, of Canada, 68
Northern textile workers, 44;
Southern groups, 40
O
“Open shop,” 45;
in steel mills, 42
Organization, of labor, 7;
of men questioning women’s admission to labor unions, 167-169;
of women workers, 165
Oriental visitor’s comment on American civilization, 79
P
Peace of the world and the bread question, 22
Philanthropy, city, 24
Pilgrim mothers, 162
“Pin-money” workers affecting regular wages, 164
Pioneers in the West and their descendants, 27, 31
Pittsburgh has bad housing conditions for steel workers, 89
Play and relaxation, 6, 207
Plymouth Church, Oakland, California, 205
Professor Parker’s report of I. W. W. in California, 142
Profit-sharing, 92, 93
R
Racial and residential phrases used by rival boy groups, 9;
more general racial groups, 55, 56
Railroads, casualty lists, 99;
churches and, 106;
expenses and profits, 103, 104;
government ownership, 106;
system statistics, 98;
work and workers, 99, 102
Ranch life, 3
Reader in Tampa, Florida, cigar factory, 119
Ready-made clothing bargains, 54, 55
“Red Jacket” mine, 74
Restless Americans, 95
“Riding out a bill,” 95
Right to work a just demand, 146;
helping agencies, 147
Robbins, Mrs. Raymond, referred to, 168
Rochester, New York, address at the City Club, 108
Rolling-mill, 84;
statistics, 86
Rural community study, 26-28, 30.
Russian, labor, 21;
revolution and the food question, 22;
unexpected collapse, 183
S
“Sacred Motherhood,” 58
Safety devices for railroad trains, 100
Saint Louis, factory conditions and women workers in, 165, 166
Saint Patrick and the Irish snakes, 183
Salvation of the individual the ultimate aim, 208
Scranton, Pennsylvania, coal famine in, 178
Seattle, song of the vagabond workers, 139;
success of minister’s experiment with “blanket stiffs,” 147
Selfishness and greed back of child labor, 176
Serving humanity, 133
Silk, 35
Sinclair, Upton, story referred to, 150
Skyscraper significant of America, 79
Social, centers formed by the churches, 205-209;
salvation and the wage-earners, 192
Social Service, Commission, 199;
Department of Congregational churches, 26
Socialism and the church, 31
Socialized church as an inspiring force, 202, 203
Song of the world of work heard in the city’s roar, 2
Soubrette Row, 130
Soul of the city, 33
Soup kitchens, 151
Southern mill village, life in, 40-47
Spencer, Herbert, quoted, 6
State laws for home work, special provision needed, 58
State University rural work in Wisconsin, 26
Steel production, 80-89;
manufacture, 80-83;
statistics, 79, 80;
uses, 80-82;
workers and working conditions, 86-89
Stencil work deforming a hand, 180
Stock-owning, 92, 93
Stock-yards of Chicago, 150
Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher, referred to, 162
Street-car men’s wages, 107
Strikes: on street-car lines, 108;
one striker’s case, 45
Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 199
Sugar-beet culture, 20;
child workers in, 174
Sugar-cane fields, processes and workers, 19
Summer use of furs, 126
Sweat-shop system, 52, 57
T
Tampa, Florida, churches, 121-123;
cigar factory, 119;
conditions, 120, 124;
statistics, 116
Task system, 53
Taylor, Florence I., effect of mill work on boys, 181
Tenant farmer, 25
Textile industries, Northern and Southern wages and workers, 40, 44
Theater as a medium of luxury, 128-130
Theories concerning the Pyramids, 96
“Tired Business Man,” the, 4
Tobacco, for cigars, 117, 118;
for the Burley demands, 173;
“worming” done by children, 173, 174
_Trade Union Woman, The_, quoted, 162, 166
Tramp as a product of labor conditions, 143-150
Transportation, 96;
and progress, 97;
other than railways, 107;
workers largely unknown to us, 109-111
Trappers, 126
Triangle Shirt Waist Company fire, 50
Trotzky’s success turned on supplying food, 22
Tuberculosis statistics, 124
Typical life of busy women illustrated, 5
U
Unemployed, problem of, 56, 137;
regulation of industry, 146;
war changes, 145, 152
Union Garment Makers’, 50
United States, Bulletin of Labor, quoted, 124;
Bureau of Labor, statistics from, 39;
coal-mine statistics, 65, 66;
Public Health Service, report quoted, 56;
Steel Corporation, concessions, 92
Urge of work, the, 1
V
Vagabond workers, in Seattle, 139;
poem, 141
Valuable non-essentials, 115
W
Wales, singing by miners a means of progress, 141
War, asking the employment of childhood, 186, 187;
requirements in communities, 207;
talks in New York City churches, 205
Washington state, a parish in, 144
Watered stock, 105
Welfare of the American seaman cared for by Act of Congress, 109
Welfare work in mining communities, 75, 76;
plan for Colorado, 77
Wetz, James E., Chicago egg-king, 178
Wheat, 17
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, referred to, 27
Willard, Frances E., referred to, 162
Williamsburg Bridge, cost and materials, 82
Winnipeg, prosperity of, 17
Wisconsin townships, survey of three, 26
Woman, former disadvantages, 155, 156;
present opportunities, 156-164
Women, needed service of the church for, 169-171;
organization of, 165-169
Women’s National Trade Union League, the, 168, 171
Wool, production and manufacture of, 35
Work, vocabulary of, 3
“Wormin’ time,” 174
Y
Young Men’s Christian Association, 77
LIST OF MISSION BOARDS AND CORRESPONDENTS
The Missionary Education Movement is conducted in behalf of the Foreign
and Home Mission Boards and Societies of the United States and Canada.
Orders for literature on foreign and home missions should be addressed
to the secretaries representing those organizations, who are prepared
to furnish special helps to leaders of mission study classes and to
other missionary workers.
If the address of the secretary of the Foreign or Home Mission Board
or Society of your denomination is unknown, orders may be sent to the
Missionary Education Movement. All persons ordering from the Missionary
Education Movement are requested to indicate their denominations when
ordering.
ADVENT CHRISTIAN--American Advent Mission Society, Rev. George E.
Tyler, 160 Warren Street, Boston, Mass.
ASSOCIATE REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN--Young People’s Christian Union and
Sabbath School Work, Rev. J. W. Carson, Newberry, S. C.
BAPTIST (NORTH)--Department of Missionary Education of the
Cooperating Organizations of the Northern Baptist Convention,
23 East 26th Street, New York City.
BAPTIST (SOUTH)--Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist
Convention, Rev. T. B. Ray, 1103 Main Street, Richmond, Va.
(Correspondence concerning both foreign and home missions.)
BAPTIST (COLORED)--Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist
Convention, Rev. L. G. Jordan, 701 South Nineteenth Street,
Philadelphia, Pa.
CHRISTIAN--The Mission Board of the Christian Church: Foreign
Missions, Rev. M. T. Morrill; Home Missions, Rev. Omer S.
Thomas, C. P. A. Building, Dayton, Ohio.
CHRISTIAN REFORMED--Board of Heathen Missions, Rev. Henry Beets,
2050 Francis Avenue, S. E., Grand Rapids, Mich.
CHURCH OF THE BRETHREN--General Mission Board of the Church of the
Brethren, Rev. Galen B. Royer, Elgin, Ill.
CONGREGATIONAL--American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions, Rev. D. Brewer Eddy, 14 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
American Missionary Association, Rev. C. J. Ryder, 287 Fourth
Avenue, New York City.
Congregational Education Society, Rev. Miles B. Fisher, 14
Beacon St., Boston, Mass.
The Congregational Home Missionary Society, Rev. William S.
Beard, 287 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
DISCIPLES OF CHRIST--Foreign Christian Missionary Society, Rev.
Stephen J. Corey, Box 884, Cincinnati, Ohio.
The American Christian Missionary Society, Mr. R. M. Hopkins,
Carew Building, Cincinnati, Ohio.
EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION--Missionary Society of the Evangelical
Association, Rev. George Johnson, 1903 Woodland Avenue, S. E.,
Cleveland, Ohio.
EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN--Board of Foreign Missions of the General
Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in N. A., Rev. George
Drach, Trappe, Pa.
Board of Home Missions of the General Council of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America, 805-807
Drexel Building, Philadelphia, Pa.
Board of Foreign Missions of the General Synod of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in the U. S. A., Rev. L. B.
Wolff, 21 West Saratoga Street, Baltimore, Md.
Board of Home Missions and Church Extension of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church, Rev. H. H. Weber, York, Pa.
Board of Foreign Missions of the United Synod of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in the South, Rev. C. L. Brown,
Columbia, S. C.
FRIENDS--American Friends Board of Foreign Missions, Mr. Ross A.
Hadley, Richmond, Ind.
Evangelistic and Church Extension Board of the Friends Five
Years’ Meeting, Mr. Harry R. Keates, 1314 Lyon Street, Des
Moines, Iowa.
GERMAN EVANGELICAL--Foreign Mission Board, German Evangelical Synod
of North America, Rev. E. Schmidt, 1377 Main Street, Buffalo,
N. Y.
METHODIST EPISCOPAL--For Mission Study, Miss Inez Traxier,
Department of Mission Study and Christian Stewardship of
the Epworth League, 740 Rush Street, Chicago, Illinois. For
Missionary Education in the Sunday School, Rev. Gilbert
Loveland, Department of Missionary Education of the Board of
Sunday Schools, 58 East Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois.
METHODIST EPISCOPAL (SOUTH)--The Educational Department of
the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South, Rev. C. G. Hounshell, 810 Broadway, Nashville, Tenn.
(Correspondence concerning both foreign and home missions.)
METHODIST PROTESTANT--Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist
Protestant Church, Rev. Fred C. Klein, 316 North Charles
Street, Baltimore, Md.
Board of Home Missions of the Methodist Protestant Church, Rev.
Charles H. Beck, 507 Pittsburgh Life Building, Pittsburgh,
Pa.
MORAVIAN--The Department of Missionary Education of the Moravian
Church in America, Northern Province, Rev. F. W. Stengel,
Lititz, Pa.
PRESBYTERIAN (U. S. A.)--The Board of Foreign Missions of the
Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., Mr. B. Carter Millikin,
Educational Secretary, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the
U. S. A., Mr. Ralph A. Felton, Director of Educational
Work, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
PRESBYTERIAN (U. S.)--Executive Committee of Foreign Missions of
the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., Mr. John I. Armstrong,
210 Union Street, Nashville, Tenn.
General Assembly’s Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in
the U. S., Rev. S. L. Morris, 1522 Hurt Building, Atlanta,
Ga.
PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL--The Domestic and Foreign. Missionary Society
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U. S. A., Mr. W. C.
Sturgis, 281 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA--Board of Foreign Missions, Rev. L. J.
Shafer; Board of Home Missions, Rev. W. T. Demarest; Board of
Publication and Bible School Work, Rev. T. F. Bayles, 25 East
Twenty-second Street, New York City.
REFORMED CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES--Mission Study Department.
Representing the Boards of Home and Foreign Missions, Mr. John
H. Poorman, 304 Reformed Church Building, Fifteenth and Race
Streets, Philadelphia, Pa.
UNITED BRETHREN IN CHRIST--Foreign Missionary Society, Rev. S. S.
Hough, Otterbein Press Building, Dayton, Ohio.
Home Missionary Society, Miss Lyda B. Wiggim, United Brethren
Building, Dayton, Ohio.
Young People’s Work, Rev. O. T. Deever, Otterbein Press
Building, Dayton, Ohio.
UNITED EVANGELICAL--Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the
United Evangelical Church and Board of Church Extension, Rev.
B. H. Niebel, Penbrook, Pa.
UNITED NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN--Board of Foreign Missions United
Norwegian Lutheran Church of America, Rev. M. Saterlie, 425-429
South Fourth Street, Minneapolis, Minn.
Board of Home Missions, United Norwegian Lutheran Church of
America, Rev. Olaf Guldseth, 425 South Fourth Street,
Minneapolis, Minn.
UNITED PRESBYTERIAN--Mission Study Department of the Board of
Foreign Missions of the United Presbyterian Church of North
America, Miss Anna A. Milligan, 200 North Fifteenth Street,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Board of Home Missions of the United Presbyterian Church of
North America, Rev. R. A. Hutchison, 209 Ninth Street,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
UNIVERSALIST--Department of Missionary Education of the General
Sunday School Association, Rev. A. Gertrude Earle, Methuen,
Mass.
Send all orders for literature to Universalist Publishing
House, 359 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass.
CANADIAN BOARDS
BAPTIST--The Canadian Baptist Foreign Mission Board, Rev. J. G.
Brown, 223 Church Street, Toronto, Ontario.
CHURCH OF ENGLAND--The Missionary Society of the Church of England
in Canada, Rev. Canon S. Gould, 131 Confederation life
Building, Toronto, Ontario.
CONGREGATIONAL--Canada Congregational Foreign Missionary Society,
Miss Effie Jamieson, 23 Woodlawn Avenue, East, Toronto, Ontario.
METHODIST--Young People’s Forward Movement Department of the
Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, Canada, Rev. F. C.
Stephenson, 299 Queen Street, West, Toronto, Ontario.
PRESBYTERIAN--Presbyterian Church in Canada, Board of Foreign
Missions, Rev. A. E. Armstrong, 439 Confederation Life
Building, Toronto, Ontario.
REVISED TO 1917
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.
On the Form near the beginning of the book, “Helps” was printed that
way, with the “s”.
Page 189: “Earl of Shaftsbury” was printed that way.
Page 192: “ascendency” was printed that way.
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